A Bigger Boat

Well, NOAA has one now.  Actually they've had the R/V Henry B Bigelow for a while now but she's just making her way to Woods Hole, the ship's putative home port. 

The Cape Cod Times has a nice little rundown about the new ship and her capabilities, automated fish species sorting anyone?  Flat screens that prompt researchers to sample specific fish based on research requests and associated printers that run off id bar codes for the samples? The Bigelow is the boat for you.

I also enjoyed the mention that since the Bigelow is bigger than her predecessor and therefore trawls more slowly 630 side by side trawls were performed in order to construct a conversion matrix so that the newer records would remain compatible with the older data.

You can see the official NOAA specs here.

The Cape Cod Times ran a nice graphic as well...