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Flipping FLIP ship saved from scrapyard at last minute

The US Navy and Scripps Institution of Oceanography's unique FLoating Instrument Platform (FLIP) has been saved at the last minute from the breaker's yard. Scheduled to be scrapped in Mexico, it was purchased by undersea design company DEEP.

This required gathering underwater acoustic data from many different depths simultaneously and the solution was a barge that displaced 700 gross tonnes and measured 355 ft (108 m) long with a 26-ft (8-m) beam. That's where the story should have ended as FLIP was towed to Mexico to be broken up and converted into so many teaspoons, but that all changed recently when DEEP founder and CEO Kristen Tertoole learned of the scrapping and put together a team to secure the barge, telling them, "Save her. According to the company, the vessel has been towed through the Panama Canal and across the Atlantic Ocean to the MB92 shipyard in La Ciotat, France, where it is undergoing renovation and modernization over the next 12 to 18 months.

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