The first hull cleaning of a cruise vessel has been completed in Copenhagen. The removal of marine fouling from the DFDS Group’s 2,800 DWT ‘Pearl Seaways’, which serves routes between Copenhagen and Oslo, marked the latest in more than 550 hull cleans carried out by the pioneering remotely operated vehicle (ROV) worldwide.
The cleaning was realized using GAC EnvironHull’s diver- and brush-free HullWiper and it took just 7.5 hours to complete, whilst the ship was in dock at the Danish port.
The diver- and brush-free HullWiper Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) uses water jets to remove fouling rather than brushes or other abrasives which can damage expensive coatings, and collects debris from the operation for environmentally approved disposal on land, thus reducing the risk of cross-pollination of waters with alien species.
Gert Jakobsen, Vice President of the DFDS Group, explained that this kind of cleaning is an environmental friendly practice, as it can handle waste water and not contaminate the local marine ecosystem with debris and fouling material, and it protects human life, as it uses a remotely operated vehicle instead of divers.
