CORVALLIS, Ore. - Oregon State University has just received a grant of $121.88 million from the National Science Foundation to spearhead the construction of a new class of research vessels for the United States Academic Research Fleet. It is the largest grant in the university's history.

This grant will fund the construction of the first of three planned vessels approved by Congress for research in coastal regions of the continental United States and Alaska. When funding for the next two vessels is authorized, the total grant to OSU could increase to as much as $365 million. The first vessel is slated to be operated by OSU for research missions focusing on the U.S. West Coast. The NSF will begin the competitive selection of operating institutions for the second and third vessels later this year - likely to universities or consortia for operations on the U.S. East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico.

"Oregon State University is extremely proud to lead this effort to create the next generation of regional ocean-going research vessels funded by NSF," said OSU President Edward J. Ray. "Our exceptional marine science programs are uniquely positioned to advance knowledge of the oceans and to seek solutions to the threats facing healthy coastal communities - and more broadly, global ecological well-being - through their teaching and research."

OSU was selected by the National Science Foundation in 2013 to lead the initial design phase for the new vessels, and to develop and execute a competitive selection for a shipyard in the United States to do the construction. Gulf Island Shipyards, LLC, in Louisiana was chosen and will conduct the detailed design verification over the next year. Officials hope to have a keel-laying ceremony for the first vessel in the spring of 2018, with the ship delivered to OSU for a year of extensive testing in 2020.

This new class of modern well-equipped ships is essential to support research encompassing marine physical, chemical, biological and geologic processes in coastal waters, said Roberta Marinelli, dean of Oregon State's College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences.

"Rising sea levels, ocean acidification, low-oxygen waters or 'hypoxia,' declining fisheries, offshore energy, and the threat of catastrophic tsunamis are issues not only in the Pacific Northwest but around the world," Marinelli said. "These new vessels will provide valuable scientific capacity for better understanding our changing oceans."

The ships will be equipped to conduct detailed seafloor mapping, to reveal geologic structures important to understanding processes such as subduction zone earthquakes that may trigger tsunamis. The Pacific Northwest is considered a high-risk region because of the Cascadia Subduction Zone, which has produced about two dozen major earthquakes of magnitude 8.0 or greater over the past 10,000 years.

The new ships will also be equipped with advanced sensors that will be used to detect and characterize harmful algal blooms, changing ocean chemistry, and the interactions between the sea and atmosphere. The emerging fields of wave, tidal and wind energy will benefit from ship observations. Oregon State is the site of the Northwest National Marine Renewable Energy Center, which in December was awarded a grant of up to $35 million from the U.S. Department of Energy to create the world's premier wave energy test facility in Newport.

Some characteristics of the new regional class research vessels (RCRVs), which were designed by The Glosten Associates, a naval architecture firm based in Seattle:

193 feet long with a 41-foot beam;

Range of approximately 7,000 nautical miles;

Cruising speed is 11.5 knots with a maximum speed of 13 knots;

16 berths for scientists and 13 for crew members;

Ability to stay out at sea for at least 21 days before returning to port;

High bandwidth satellite communications for streaming data and video to shore;

"This class of ships will enable researchers to work much more safely and efficiently at sea because of better handling and stability, more capacity for instrumentation and less noise," said Clare Reimers, a professor in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences and project co-leader. "The design also has numerous 'green' features, including an optimized hull form, waste heat recovery, LED lighting, and variable speed power generation."

Oregon State is expected to begin operating the first of the new ships in the fall of 2021, after a year of testing and then official Academic-Fleet designation by the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS), according to Demian Bailey, also a project co-leader for OSU.

"There will be a full year of testing because there are many interconnected systems to try out," Bailey said. "Any new ship needs to have shakedown cruises, but we'll have to test all of the scientific instrumentation as well, from the acoustic multibeam seafloor mapping system to its seawater and meteorological data collection, processing and transfer capabilities.

"These ships will be very forward-looking and are expected to support science operations for 40 years or longer. They will be the most advanced ships of their kind in the country."

OSU previously operated the 184-foot R/V Wecoma from 1975 until 2012, when it was retired. The university then assumed operations of Wecoma's sister ship, R/V Oceanus, from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; that ship will be retired when the new ship is ready.

The tentative timetable for the new ships:

Ship No. 1 keel laying - spring 2018;

Ship No. 1 transition to OSU for a year of testing - fall 2020;

Ship No. 1 should be fully tested, have UNOLS designation and be fully operational by fall 2021;

Ship No. 2 - Keel laying in winter of 2018, delivery in spring 2021, and UNOLS designation in late spring 2022;

Ship No. 3 - Keel laying in fall 2020, delivery in spring 2022, and UNOLS designation in spring 2023.

More information on the ships and the project is available at: http://ceoas.oregonstate.edu/ships/rcrv/.