With an ability to drift over the ocean
like a ship - yet transform into a vertical buoy in pursuit of
scientific research - the Navy's Floating Instrument Platform (FLIP) is
one of the most unique ships on (or under) the water.

Scores of scientists have
deployed aboard the 355-foot research vessel, owned by the Office of
Naval Research (ONR) and administered and operated by the Marine
Physical Laboratory at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, based at the
University of California, San Diego

The ship conducts investigations in a number of fields, including
acoustics, oceanography, meteorology and marine mammal observation.Dr Frank Herr, head of ONR's Ocean Battlespace Sensing Department, said: 'FLIP's unique characteristic of a low-profile, stable observational platform has proven particularly useful over the years.

'It will continue to be a research vessel of choice for our naval scientists.'

What makes the vessel so special is
that it can partially submerge like a sinking ship by filling ballast
tanks in its stern with water.
When in its vertical position, FLIP's
visible floating platform extends 55 feet above the ocean surface while
the rest of the hull reaches 300 feet below the water.
Because so much of the vessel is
submerged when it sits upright, the platform is impervious to the ocean
waves, providing a stable environment for researchers to do their work.
'I'm so thankful that ONR and Scripps
have been able to maintain FLIP as an active platform,' said Dr. C.
Linwood Vincent, a recently retired ONR division director who managed a
number of projects that employed the vessel.Now on the faculty at the University
of Miami, Vincent added, 'It would be very difficult to conduct these
studies on a rocking ship.'
Built in 1962, the steel-hulled platform accommodates 11 researchers and a crew of five for up to 30 days.

It does not have its own propulsion
and must be towed to research locations in the ocean, where it 'flips'
into vertical position in approximately 20 minutes.
FLIP, designed by Scripps scientists
Fred Spiess and Fred Fisher, operates in two modes, drifting with the
currents or moored to the sea floor, and supports the deployment of a
variety of sensors and instruments.
'FLIP was originally designed to
study underwater acoustics - the bending of sound,' said William Gaines,
the program manager at Scripps.'In recent times, we've done a lot of
the marine mammal research because FLIP has the ability to be very
quiet in the vertical position. We can place hydrophone arrays far below
the surface and put marine mammal observers up top to correlate the
signals from the animals to the visual observations.'
In 2010, researchers used FLIP for a
set of experiments called High Resolution Air-Sea Interaction project,
which measured wind and swell conditions. That data is helping to
improve weather models and other ocean-atmosphere databases.
'FLIP was the pivotal platform for
that project, which also included research done by traditional research
ships and remotely piloted aircraft,' said Tim Schnoor, the program
officer who oversees ONR's research vessel programs.
Naval Research Laboratory scientists
recently employed FLIP for oceanographic work using lasers. Additional
studies are in the works, and FLIP will continue to support scientists
in their research endeavors.
'It's in good material condition,'
said Schnoor. 'We've continued to invest in maintenance and preservation
of the platform, including taking hull thickness measurements to ensure
hull integrity. There's no reason it can't continue to serve research
needs as long as we have users to exploit her unique capabilities.'