By Dean Murray via SWNS
An iconic ship that appears to capsize has been saved from the scrapyard – by a Bristol-based firm.
The FLIP (Floating Instrument Platform) was a pioneering research vessel operated for more than fifty years by the U.S. Navy’s Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
The unique 355-foot ship is able to turn 90 degrees when “flipped” at sea to provide a stable, mobile at-sea experimental laboratory.
It was decommissioned in August 2023 and towed to Mexico to be scrapped.
However, word of FLIP’s impending destruction reached DEEP, a subsea design firm developing the next generation of underwater human habitats.
The company said in a 23 October statement that within 48 hours of hearing the news a team had been scrambled and was en route to Mexico to intercept FLIP before it was destroyed.
“The direction from our founder was quite clear,” says Giulio Maresca, FLIP’s new Captain: “Save her. Don’t come back without her.”
Now, months later, the rescued platform has made its way from Mexico, through the Panama Canal and across the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, where over the next 12 – 18 months it will be refitted and modernized in France.
Kristen Tertoole, CEO of DEEP, said: “FLIP is an iconic research platform – anyone in the maritime research or engineering communities knows about her, and many have a war story or two. We’re incredibly proud to confirm FLIP’s arrival in European waters.
“FLIP is from a time of bold engineering and optimism for our future and our oceans, an ethos DEEP shares and seeks to embody. Our mission is perhaps equally bold: to make humans aquatic by enabling our species to live, work and thrive underwater.”
The company says FLIP will play a key role in the DEEP fleet, providing a one-of-a-kind platform for ocean research and being capable of supporting their underwater Sentinel habitat deployments.
Kristen Tertoole adds: “We look forward to announcing her relaunch in early 2026, and I’m thrilled to confirm that many oceanographic and research groups are already in contact to ensure access.”
Built in 1962 with funding from ONR, FLIP helped generations of scientists and oceanographers better understand the mysteries of the sea, including internal waves, air-sea interaction and long-range sound propagation.
“Sadly, age and exorbitant life-extension costs resulted in the platform being disestablished,” the ONR said at the time of its decommissioning.
When horizontal, FLIP was towed out to sea where on-board hydraulics and ballast tanks flipped the platform – in about 30 minutes – to the vertical.
The experimental laboratory was capable of riding out swells while providing sensor data 300 feet into the water column.
FLIP could carry a research team of 11 people and a crew of five, and sustain research operations for up to 30 days without resupply.
Everything mounted on the platform turns 90 degrees when flipped at sea, including all fixtures — from generators to toilets — turning at right angles.
DEEP is developing the Sentinel habitat, that will allow scientists to live underwater at depths of up to 200 meters for up to 28 days at a time.
