The sun has set on “an engineering marvel,” part of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego for 60 years.
The Floating Instrument Platform (FLIP), a baseball-shaped platform that the institution described as “one of the most innovative oceanographic research tools ever invented,” on Thursday was towed to a dismantling and recycling facility.
The end came six years after its last research voyage and three years after it was determined that the costs to renovate it were too high.
“R/P FLIP has existed for more than half the length of the institution’s entire history,” said Scripps Oceanography Director Margaret Leinen. “It was an engineering marvel constructed during an important phase of new technology for ocean exploration following World War II. The many discoveries from FLIP help set the stage for ongoing cutting-edge science to understand our ocean.”
FLIP ‘s design helped to advance understanding of ocean currents, ocean acoustics, air-sea interactions, marine mammals and more. It also inspired millions of school-age children, routinely appearing in grade school textbooks used in schools throughout the U.S.
Scripps oceanographer Luc Lenain cited FLIP’s “exceptional dynamic stability,” its attached booms and the flexibility it gave scientists to deploy specialized laboratory instrumentation in the field as tools that “revolutionized our understanding of the coupling between the ocean and the atmosphere.”
“It also played a crucial role in advancing and validating new cutting-edge observational technologies such as instrumented autonomous surface vehicles, radar and electro-optical based remote sensing of the environment – tools that are now routinely used in ocean field programs,” he added.
Launched in June 1962, R/P FLIP drew attention from around the world owing to its unusual appearance and unique capability to “flip” from a horizontal position to a vertical orientation at sea.
“FLIP set the stage for thinking big about what could be done with technology to enable new scientific discoveries,” Eric Terrill, director of Scripps’ Marine Physical Laboratory. “It was built in an era of risk-taking; a spirit that we try to embrace to this day and encourage in the next generation of seagoing scientists.”
To scientists, the “flip” made it a singular tool for studying the oceans. FLIP maneuvered to its vertical position by filling its ballast tanks with water, causing all but the top 55 feet of its 355-foot total length to be submerged in the ocean.
Oriented vertically, FLIP was supported well below the motion of the waves, giving FLIP its singular capability of remaining nearly motionless amid even violent ocean swells. This unique characteristic, according to the institution, “enabled the transformational science with which it became synonymous.”
In the end, a pair of tugboats pushed FLIP away from its berth and out to sea as dusk fell.
By chance, the submersible Alvin, also a pioneer in ocean research, was at Scripps’ Nimitz Marine Facility stowed on its support ship, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution research vessel Atlantis, which had just docked.
Scripps Oceanography officials have made arrangements for one of FLIP’s booms, the crane-like arms of the platform that held research instruments, to be removed and attached to the Scripps Pier in La Jolla.
It will be used to deploy instruments the same way it did aboard FLIP, while also serving as an ongoing tribute to the venerable research platform and an inspiration to the oceanographers who continue to add to our understanding of the ocean.
