Just recently, the Bremen Center for Marine Environmental Sciences presented their new underwater drill rig MARUM-MeBo200 to the public, following a period of development and construction lasting a full four years. In the second half of October this year, the high-tech equipment will undergo scientific and technical tests at sea on the new research vessel SONNE. MARUM-MeBo200 is being financed by the German Ministry for Education and Research, and costs the best part of eight million euros.
Weighing ten-tons, the MARUM-MeBo200 is a remote controlled underwater drilling device for use on large research vessels. The unique mobile drill rig is six meters high and capable of operating at depths of up to 2,700 meters. It can extract bore samples of loose sediment and rocks up to 200 meters long.
“The earlier model developed in 2005 is only capable of drilling 70 meters into the sea bed”, says MARUM director, Prof. Gerold Wefer. He goes on to explain that the new longer core samples will provide evidence of what the climate and environment were like in much earlier times. It is expected they may also improve our understanding of how tsunamis are caused.
As Prof. Michael Schulz stressed, “The new drilling system puts Bremen, and with it Germany, at the absolute fore of deep-sea ocean-bed technology.” Schulz is also a director of MARUM, and he is aware that internationally, for instance in the frame of the worldwide International Ocean Discovery Program IODP, there is considerable excitement surrounding the new Bremen drill rig. Despite the fact that transport to the port of the drill device and its frame, the winches, control and launching equipment, hydraulics and power generator requires no less than seven containers, “…extracting core samples from the ocean bed with the new portable device MARUM-MeBo200 will be significantly more cost efficient than using special-purpose drilling vessels”, says Michael Schulz.
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For more information / interview requests / image material:
Albert Gerdes
MARUM Communications
Phone: +49 421 218-65540
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