Awards & Recognition

No other vessel can provide the deck gear, the geophysical capabilities, and the coring capabilities of the R/V VIRGINIA. It’s got the flexibility to do almost anything on the water that any of our scientists might want to do to increase our understanding, now or in the future.

Working with JMS has been a welcomed and valued experience. They have partnered with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science in creating the vision of our new flagship research vessel through their leadership, focus on customer service, and high quality of their design.

It is very comfortable, very quiet, and for a 93-foot boat there is a lot of room for working. It was well thought out. JMS did a great job designing it, and the scientists that participated in the whole process did a really good job thinking about how the boat would best accommodate their needs. The crew is reveling in its design features, many of them unique. It’s got a lot of capabilities that we’re excited about. It’s a lot different than anything that we’ve had here before at the Institute. To meet the intense hydraulic power demands of the trawl winches, for instance, the VIRGINIA has two engines driving one transmission — something common in Europe, but this is the first version on the East Coast. It also has a dynamic positioning system that will enable the vessel to hold position to within one foot using its motors alone — no anchors — even under bad weather conditions. That’s going to be real handy when it comes to doing any kind of coring work and any kind of buoy deployment.

It is an all-in-one platform that can function efficiently as a fisheries research vessel for stock assessments, trawling and longlining, and can simply switch over to deploy a buoy with scientific instruments. It can also tow plankton nets and hydrographic survey equipment … and can do that all from the same platform.

I want to personally thank JMS for your tireless dedication to this project and for your unfaltering professionalism throughout. It is always a pleasure to work with JMS. You represent your company and USGS well.

We are still enjoying the R/V FAY SLOVER. It has proven to be a very satisfactory platform for our needs within the OEAS (Oceanography, Earth, and Atmospheric Studies) department at ODU. I have been onboard ten years this coming April and have cherished being the skipper of the vessel.

When the University of New Hampshire decided to build a new research vessel, they listened to all of our needs and ideas and designed an extremely seaworthy boat that has successfully operated as the flagship of our fleet for many years.  Excellent visibility from the pilothouse, combined with the efficient layout of the large back deck, provides a reliable and safe work platform for activities varying from offshore buoy deployments and recoveries to dive operations to taking groups of students out to complete their class work.

The “Tioga” has turned out to be far more capable than we envisioned during the design process. We had a series of meetings with WHOI scientists to customize the design of the boat for maximum flexibility and were able to incorporate many of their higher priority requirements into the design. The vessel’s speed and fuel performance exceeded the specifications and the design allows her to carry out more tasks than we ever expected. After years of operation, there is little we would change.

We selected our naval architect to design the RACHEL CARSON based on the success of the three earlier CHALLENGER Class research vessels.  During the design process, we were convinced to use water jet propulsion and incorporate dynamic positioning into the vessel control system, both of which have proven to be wise decisions. The vessel is fast, highly maneuverable, and has proven to be a very versatile and stable platform for mooring operations, fisheries studies, and general survey work. After years of successful operations, RACHEL CARSON has far exceeded our expectations.

As a research technician and user of the R/V CONNECTICUT, perhaps the greatest attributes for me, are her versatility and the stability of the ship as a working platform. I’ve participated in the deployment and recovery of large buoy systems used for long term environmental monitoring of atmospheric and oceanographic measurements, as part of the technical crew working on ten-day ROV operations, and as a SCUBA diver recovering and deploying oceanographic instrumentation. With a large deck space the R/V CONNECTICUT can accommodate a variety of equipment, for diverse purposes.  She has performed flawlessly on every cruise I’ve attended.

The R/V FAY SLOVER is the pride of the OEAS department at ODU.  Designed to execute the functions of hydrography, meteorology, and scientific instrumentation deployment, she provides a base of operations for several ODU departments, outside users, independent researchers, and the Virginia branch of the Chesapeake Bay Water Quality Project.  Constantly evolving from her original, easily adaptable, design, she is host to a variety of new and exciting endeavors including diving, core sampling, survey work, lidar experiments, mooring, current microstructure profiling, and several community outreach programs. Old Dominion University and her crew expect her to continue to be one of the University’s greatest assets and platforms for multi-departmental research for many years to come.