Е.А. Yakovlenkov, V.I. Chernook, A.L. Sverdlov
(GIPRORYBFLOT Institute, 18-20, Malaya Morskaya Street,
St. Petersburg, 190000, Russia)
D.E. Levashov (VNIRO, 17, V. Krasnoselskaya, Moscowl 07140, Russia)

Research vessels of fishing industry provide for studying, conservation and rational use of hydrobionts.

Taking into consideration that research vessels are mostly used for trawl-acoustic surveys with evaluation of fish stocks, the main emphasis while designing new research vessel should be made on the improvement for acoustical measurements conditions.

During international acoustic surveys is it necessary to carry out scientific measurements onboard all research vessels in a similar way in any sea conditions. Provided that we collect acoustic surveys data in similar method, so after data exchange between participants we could have form good joint database for total area investigated by all ships.

GIPRORYBFLOT Institute have developed a preliminary design for the Russian research vessel of new generation. Many different requirements expressed by fishery scientists shall be taken into consideration while designing a sophisticated research vessel. In order to obtain better results in trawl-acoustic survey it is necessary to improve hydro acoustic performance on board of fishery research vessels. Noise from research vessel has been a serious source of measurements error because it influences the natural behavior of fish. It is also required that the vessel shall be able to obtain high quality data in rough weather conditions.

The design foresees new technical solutions to reduce underwater noise. Research vessel will be designed according to the ICES-209 recommendations for underwater-radiated noise to minimize vessel's influence during fish abundance surveys. The technical requirements to the total set of scientific equipment have been made together with VNIRO-Institute.

In order to carry out a wide variety of research work the "quiet" research vessel will be equipped with a large number of different scientific equipment:

Acoustic instrumentation. In line with traditional scientific echo sounders with keel-mounted and towed transducers the ship will be equipped with multibeam echo sounders and multibeam sonars:

- Hydrographic equipment;

- Нуdrobiological equipment;

- Remotely operated vehicle (ROV), TOV, AUV;

- Automatic flow-through measuring system;

- Photo-, Video-, Infrared-, LIDAR- Systems;

- Unmanned aircraft research Vehicle.

Combining data from different scientific equipment improves quality of the survey based evaluation of the fish stocks. Special attention should be paid to new measurements technologies and metrological support of measurements.

In general, overall dimensions and other specification of the offered research vessel have been chosen with consideration of requirements towards the scope , lay-out and operation of the integrated research system. Taking into account that there will be not less than 10 laboratories, 6-7 research winches, 20-25 scientists and that the measuring equipment shall be similar to the systems used onboard foreign vessels involved into this joint project, it was decided to design a large vessel (length overall 80m).

No doubt, the integrated research system shall be developed in advance to the technical design stage for research vessel.

New instrumental methods of aquatic biological resources exploration will provide for advanced level of fisheries forecasting.

FISHERY IN NORTH ATLANTIC: REALITY AND PROSPECTS