CCGS ''Alfred Needler''CCGS stands for Canadian Coast Guard Ship was an offshore fishery science vessel operated by the

Canadian Coast Guard The Canadian Coast Guard (CCG; french: links=no, Garde côtière canadienne, GCC) is the coast guard of Canada. Formed in 1962, the coast guard is tasked with marine search and rescue (SAR), communication, navigation, and transportation issues in ...

. The vessel entered service in 1982 with the

Department of Fisheries and Oceans Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO; french: Pêches et Océans Canada, MPO), is a department of the Government of Canada that is responsible for developing and implementing policies and programs in support of Canada's economic, ecological and sc ...

, stationed at the

Bedford Institute of Oceanography The Bedford Institute of Oceanography (BIO) is a major Government of Canada ocean research facility located in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. BIO is the largest ocean research station in Canada. Established in 1962 as Canada's first, and currently la ...

Dartmouth, Nova Scotia Dartmouth ( ) is an urban community and former city located in the Halifax Regional Municipality of Nova Scotia, Canada. Dartmouth is located on the eastern shore of Halifax Harbour. Dartmouth has been nicknamed the City of Lakes, after the larg ...

. In 1995, in order to reduce the number of ships and combine tasks, the Fisheries and Oceans fleet and the Canadian Coast Guard fleets were merged under the Canadian Coast Guard.

Design and description

''Alfred Needler'' is a stern

commercial trawler A fishing trawler is a commercial fishing vessel designed to operate fishing trawls. Trawling is a method of fishing that involves actively dragging or pulling a trawl through the water behind one or more trawlers. Trawls are fishing nets tha ...

design that is

long overall __NOTOC__ Length overall (LOA, o/a, o.a. or oa) is the maximum length of a vessel's hull measured parallel to the waterline. This length is important while docking the ship. It is the most commonly used way of expressing the size of a ship, an ...

with a

beam Beam may refer to: Streams of particles or energy *Light beam, or beam of light, a directional projection of light energy **Laser beam *Particle beam, a stream of charged or neutral particles **Charged particle beam, a spatially localized grou ...

of and a draught of . The ship is similar in design to , but with different machinery, power and speed. The ship has a and a . The research vessel is powered by one

Caterpillar Caterpillars ( ) are the larval stage of members of the order Lepidoptera (the insect order comprising butterflies and moths). As with most common names, the application of the word is arbitrary, since the larvae of sawflies (suborder Sym ...

3606 six-cylinder geared

diesel engine The diesel engine, named after Rudolf Diesel, is an internal combustion engine in which ignition of the fuel is caused by the elevated temperature of the air in the cylinder due to mechanical compression; thus, the diesel engine is a so-call ...

driving one controllable pitch

propeller A propeller (colloquially often called a screw if on a ship or an airscrew if on an aircraft) is a device with a rotating hub and radiating blades that are set at a pitch to form a helical spiral which, when rotated, exerts linear thrust upon ...

creating . The vessel is also equipped with one Caterpillar 3306 emergency generator. This gives the vessel a maximum speed of . ''Alfred Needler'' carries of

diesel fuel Diesel fuel , also called diesel oil, is any liquid fuel specifically designed for use in a diesel engine, a type of internal combustion engine in which fuel ignition takes place without a spark as a result of compression of the inlet air and t ...

, has a range of at and can stay at sea for up to 30 days. The vessel has a

complement A complement is something that completes something else. Complement may refer specifically to: The arts * Complement (music), an interval that, when added to another, spans an octave ** Aggregate complementation, the separation of pitch-class ...

of 21 composed of 7 officers and 14 crew and has 3 additional berths.

Service history

The research vessel was constructed for the

in 1982 by Ferguson Industries Limited at their yard in

Pictou Pictou ( ; Canadian Gaelic: ''Baile Phiogto'') is a town in Pictou County, in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Located on the north shore of Pictou Harbour, the town is approximately 10 km (6 miles) north of the larger town of New Gla ...

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland". Most of the population are native Eng ...

with the

yard number __NOTOC__ M ...

211. The ship entered service in August 1982. She was named after Canadian fisheries marine biologist

Alfred Needler Alfred Walker Holinshead Needler (1906 – 4 September 1998) was a Canadian scientist, administrator, diplomat and statesman. Alfred Needler was instrumental in establishing research for estimating large migratory marine fish populations from sm ...

, a former Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Oceans who developed a method of accurate fish counts from small surveys. In 1995, in an effort to combine tasks, administration and making savings in both ships and funds, the Fisheries and Oceans and

fleets were merged under the command of the Canadian Coast Guard. ''Alfred Needler'' was given the new prefix CCGS as a result. The ship was based at

although she is often alongside at the

. She was one of several fishery research vessels operated by the Government of Canada to monitor migratory fish stocks in the

North Atlantic The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the "Old World" of Africa, Europe and ...

. ''Alfred Needler'' was used by Canada and the

Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization The Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) is an intergovernmental organization with a mandate to provide scientific advice and management of fisheries in the northwestern part of the Atlantic Ocean. NAFO is headquartered in Halifax, N ...

(NAFO) to conduct fisheries surveys; as such, she retains the configuration of a

, although her fish holds are converted to laboratory space. The samples collected are used to study the population and health of various species of ocean life. ''Alfred Needler'' experienced an engine room fire on 30 August 2003. There were no casualties although the ship sustained $1.3 million in damage. The cause of the fire was an oil leak in an incorrectly repaired turbocharger. In September 2009, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans announced invitations for contracts to replace several of the Coast Guard's research vessels, including ''Alfred Needler''. In July 2016, ''Alfred Needler'' discovered the wreck of a ship while trawling the waters off Nova Scotia. The vessel had been conducting an annual survey of the

Georges Bank Georges Bank (formerly known as St. Georges Bank) is a large elevated area of the sea floor between Cape Cod, Massachusetts (United States), and Cape Sable Island, Nova Scotia (Canada). It separates the Gulf of Maine from the Atlantic Ocean. Th ...

for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. ''Alfred Needler'' began a $558,000 refit at St. John's Dockyard in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador in January 2018. The refit was scheduled to be completed in six weeks on 14 February, but additional steel work pushed the completion date to 1 April. was scheduled to replace ''Alfred Needler'' on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans' fisheries survey off the coast of southern Nova Scotia in late March. During the annual summer fisheries survey on the

Scotian Shelf The Scotian Shelf is a geological formation, part of the Continental shelf, located southwest of Nova Scotia, Canada. It covers an area of , is long and ranges in width from . It has an average depth of . The Scotian Shelf contains the ecological ...

in 2018, she had several mission critical equipment failures, forcing the cancellation of the survey. This marked the first time in 48 years that the survey was not completed. ''Teleost'' was used to complete an abbreviated version of the survey. After suffering a number of significant mechanical and structural failures the ship was decommissioned in February 2023.

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

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External links

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Case Study: Maintenance failures and the need for current manuals
{{DEFAULTSORT:Alfred Needler, CCGS Alfred Needler-class fisheries research ships 1980 ships Ships built in Nova Scotia Ships of the Canadian Coast Guard Coast guards