One of the world’s largest freezer longliner fishing vessels has been ordered for Alaska fishing company Alaskan Leader Fisheries LLC.
The vessel, Northern Leader, will be designed by Jensen Maritime Consultants and constructed by J.M. Martinac Shipbuilding Corporation of Tacoma, Washington.
When completed, this vessel will have one of the largest freezer hold capacities of any longliner vessel.
Johan Sperling, Jensen’s vice president said, Our experience is allowing us to inject new technologies into this [fishing] industry that were developed for the workboat industries – most importantly, the new propulsion package being delivered on the Northern Leader.”
The Northern Leader will be 184′ X 42′ X 18.75′ in size and will be used to support the longline fisheries of the North Pacific, Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands. The innovative vessel design will allow for full utilisation of all targeted fish species using equipment that has minimal environmental impact on the ocean’s ecosystem, while maintaining the lightest operational fossil fuel footprint possible.
The vessel will be designed with more than 38,000 cubic feet of freezer hold, representing a frozen production capacity of 1,867,000lb, and will be capable of fishing 76,800 hooks per day using a Mustad Autoline Super Baiter. Daily freezing capacity will be a maximum of 153,000lb per day of H&G production. Fuel capacity of the vessel will be approximately 136,000 gallons.
The Northern Leader will be designed to be fully diesel-electric. Its propulsion will be powered by two Schottel Z-Drive rudder propellers, type SRP1012FP (1,000 kW each) and one Schottel tunnel thruster type STT170FP (300 kW). The diesel generating system will be provided by NC Power Systems of Seattle and will consist of four Caterpillar C32 gensets rated at 715 kW each, two Caterpillar C18 gensets rated at 425 kW each, and one Caterpillar C9 genset rated at 238 kW.
The vessel will be ABS classed for the Maltese Cross, A1 Fishing Vessel with AMS. Total international tonnage is estimated at 1800 ITC.
The delivery date for the Northern Leader is late April, 2013, and it will be homeported in Kodiak, Alaska.
Mercator Media Ltd 2012