China’s First Privately Built Scientific Research Vessel Is About to Begin Sea Trials

China's first 3,500ton comprehensive oceanographic research vessel, the "Haiying Jiake," which was fully funded and built by private capital, was launched in Wenling City, Taizhou, Zhejiang in May. After four months of construction, it has entered the final stage of outfitting and integrated commissioning of scientific research equipment, and is expected to begin sea trials at the end of September. At present, the vessel is berthed at Ruoshan Fishing Port in Wenling, with interior outfitting, painting work, and equipment debugging all progressing simultaneously. Supporting facilities such as the conference room, crew quarters, and scientific research cold storage have basically been installed, and equipment including the deepsea operating robotic arm and highdefinition detection and monitoring system has also been put in place. Jia Xuanrong, the project's technical director, said that the installation and testing of onboard equipment are being carried out one after another, and the remaining work mainly consists of finetuning details. The project side emphasized that it will adhere to "obtain certification first, then deliver," and will not engage in formal commercial cooperation before obtaining the relevant statutory certificates for the vessel and crew. After certification and deployment, this privately owned scientific research vessel will target the national marine scientific research market, taking on tasks such as seabed surveying and mapping, marine resource exploration, and marine biological surveys.