Russian Marine Rescue Service inaugurates new Arctic support tugs

The Russian Marine Rescue Service inaugurated two new tugs in a ceremony at the Port of Murmansk on Wednesday, April 23.

TIman and Tepsey belong to the Project NE025 series of tugs built by Okskaya Shipyard for the marine rescue service.

Designed by local naval architecture firm Nordic Engineering, the Project NE025 tugs will perform duties including towing of non-self-propelled pontoons, salvage, installation and maintenance of buoys, anchor handling, maritime safety patrols, cargo transport, dredging support, oil spill response, and firefighting.

In the summer and autumn months, the tugs will be able to independently navigate through thin first-year Arctic ice up to 80 cm thick, In the winter-spring period, the vessels can navigate through ice up to 60 cm thick. In finer ice conditions of freezing non-Arctic seas, the vessels can be operated year-round.

The tugs are also capable of deploying oil spill response equipment even without their hulls coming into contact with spilled oil on the surface of the water, thus ensuring greater safety for their crews.

For firefighting, each tug relies on a main engine-driven pump and two foam/water monitors that can be controlled remotely from the wheelhouse.