MV Esperanza
Encyclopedia
MY Esperanza is a ship operated by Greenpeace
Greenpeace
Greenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...
. Previous to being a Greenpeace ship it was a fire-fighter owned by the Russian Navy, built in 1984. It was recommissioned in 2000 and launched in 2002 after being named Esperanza ('hope' in Spanish) by visitors to the Greenpeace website. It had undergone a major refit by Greenpeace to make it more environmentally friendly. A new helicopter
Helicopter
A helicopter is a type of rotorcraft in which lift and thrust are supplied by one or more engine-driven rotors. This allows the helicopter to take off and land vertically, to hover, and to fly forwards, backwards, and laterally...
deck and boat cranes were also added.
The ship has a heavy ice class
Icebreaker
An icebreaker is a special-purpose ship or boat designed to move and navigate through ice-covered waters. Although the term usually refers to ice-breaking ships, it may also refer to smaller vessels .For a ship to be considered an icebreaker, it requires three traits most...
, giving it the ability to work in polar region
Polar region
Earth's polar regions are the areas of the globe surrounding the poles also known as frigid zones. The North Pole and South Pole being the centers, these regions are dominated by the polar ice caps, resting respectively on the Arctic Ocean and the continent of Antarctica...
s. It has a top speed of 16 knots and an overall length of 72.3 meters. This makes it the fastest and largest of the Greenpeace fleet. It is registered as a Motor Yacht.
It has been involved in many campaigns, starting with the logging 'save or delete' campaign and currently in the Arctic off the coast of Greenland, protesting against an offshore drilling project by Cairn Energy
Cairn Energy
Cairn Energy plc is a global oil and gas exploration company headquartered in Edinburgh, United Kingdom. It has operational interests in Albania, Bangladesh, Greenland, India, Nepal and Tunisia and produces around 33,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day...
.
Video equipment aboard
Greenpeace added live webcams to the Esperanza in 2006. The webcams are positioned on the bowBow (ship)
The bow is a nautical term that refers to the forward part of the hull of a ship or boat, the point that is most forward when the vessel is underway. Both of the adjectives fore and forward mean towards the bow...
of the ship, the mast and the bridge
Bridge (ship)
The bridge of a ship is the room or platform from which the ship can be commanded. When a ship is underway the bridge is manned by an OOW aided usually by an AB acting as lookout...
, they send a new image every minute to their Defending Our Oceans website and provide an archive of action.
In April 2006, the Esperanza was equipped with state-of-the-art underwater monitoring equipment, including a remotely operated vehicle
Remotely operated vehicle
A remotely operated vehicle is a tethered underwater vehicle. They are common in deepwater industries such as offshore hydrocarbon extraction. An ROV may sometimes be called a remotely operated underwater vehicle to distinguish it from remote control vehicles operating on land or in the air. ROVs...
(ROV) which can shoot video down to a depth of 300 meters, and a drop camera capable of reaching depths of 1,000 meters.
See also
- GreenpeaceGreenpeaceGreenpeace is a non-governmental environmental organization with offices in over forty countries and with an international coordinating body in Amsterdam, The Netherlands...
- Rainbow WarriorRainbow Warrior (1978)The Rainbow Warrior was a former UK Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food trawler later purchased by the environmental organisation Greenpeace...
- MV Arctic SunriseMV Arctic SunriseThe MY Arctic Sunrise is an icebreaker operated by Greenpeace. The vessel was built in 1975 and has a gross tonnage of 949 tonnes, a length of 50 m and a maximum speed of...
- Yellow ThingYellow ThingThe Yellow Thing is a double-hulled floating vessel , used by Greenpeace to sample marine debris. As of 2006, its primary mission is to be used as a trawl for plastic samples in areas such as the Mediterranean Sea and the North Pacific Gyre. It is not self-powered, rather it is towed via a...
- MY Steve Irwin (Flagship of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society)