Highlights of the Week

Subsea World News has put together a recap of the most interesting articles from the previous week (December 26 – January 01).

Two Maersk Supply Service anchor handling tug supply vessels (AHTS) have sunk offshore France.

Maersk Supply Service confirmed to Subsea World News that Maersk Battler vessel lost two towed supply vessels Maersk Searcher and Maersk Shipper on December 22.

Siem Offshore’s second well intervention vessel Siem Helix 2 has joined the company’s fleet on December 21, 2016.

The vessel was delivered to the company at Flensburger Schiffsgebau, Germany, Siem Offshore informed through social media. Siem Helix 2 joins its sister vessel Siem Helix 1 as the largest and most complex vessel ever delivered to Siem Offshore, the company said.

Norwegian oil and gas company, Aker BP, started oil production from the Ivar Aasen field in the North Sea on Saturday.

Aker BP is the operator of the unitized development, with a 34.7862 percent interest. The Ivar Aasen field is located in the northern part of the North Sea, about 175 km west of Karmøy, and contains around 186 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe), excluding Hanz.

Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s (MBARI) Benthic Rover, an autonomous seafloor crawler, recently broke the world record for longest distance traveled and duration sustained by a seafloor crawler.

The Benthic Rover, an untethered, entirely autonomous seafloor crawler, has been collecting scientific data on the seafloor for an entire year.

A team of geologists, chemists, and biologists aboard research vessel Falkor have finished surveying the largely unexplored Mariana Back-Arc for life at depths greater than 13,000 feet (some 3.96 kilometers).

Dr. David Butterfield, JISAO, University of Washington, and Dr. William Chadwick, NOAA-PMEL and Oregon State University, led the group to the Back-Arc; returning for the second phase of a two-part exploration of the region.