User:PeaceLuvThor/sandbox

RV Heraclitus is a research vessel owned and operated by Ecotechnics Maritime, a UK limited company. The ship conducts conservation research, action missions, and oral history documentation of coastal cultures. Since her launch in Oakland, California on February 24, 1975, she has travelled over 270,000 nautical miles and sailed all the world’s oceans except the Arctic. In 1978, the ship signed a cooperative agreement with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration to collect weather, wind, cloud, temperature, and rainfall data during its voyages.

The ship was constructed in 1974-75 at the Fifth Avenue Marina in Oakland by members of the Institute of Ecotechnics, an organization concerned with the harmonious integration of technology and ecology founded in 1973. Designed by John P. Allen, William F. Dempster, and Phil Hawes using a Chinese junk model, RV Heraclitus is a synergy of ancient and modern features, using ferrocement for its hull and deck, and propelled by Chinese junk sails augmented by diesel engine.

Expeditions
RV Heraclitus has undertaken twelve expeditions, including a three-year round-the-world voyage and journey through the tropics. She has undertaken oral history documentation in the Mediterranean Sea, circumnavigated South America and sailed to Antarctica to study the humpback whale population, and performed coral reef studies in the Indian Ocean with the National University of Singapore.

In 1980, accompanied by ethnobotanists Wade Davis, Terence McKenna, and Dennis McKenna, the ship sailed 2,200 miles up the Amazon river to Iquitos, Peru, collecting more than 12,000 botanical samples. In partnership with the University of Lima, they donated sets of their samples to the Missouri Botanical Garden, New York Botanical Garden, and Kew Gardens in England.

From 1990-91, the ship collected hundreds of coral reef specimens and other marine life along the Yucatan coast of Mexico for the oceanic biome inside the Biosphere 2 science research facility in Oracle, Arizona. From 1996-2008, she teamed with the Biosphere Foundation in Indonesia to map and study coral reef health at many locations in the Pacific and Indian oceans.

RV Heraclitus is currently in drydock in Roses, Spain undergoing the final phase of a complete rebuild.