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Leeuwin Class survey ship HMAS Melville will be decommissioned in Queensland next month, according to a statement from the Australian Defence Force.
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The Royal Australian Navy announced that HMAS Melville will be retired after 24 years of service during an official decommissioning ceremony at Trinity Wharf Two in Cairns on 8 August this year.
The vessel reportedly travelled through the Indian Ocean off Western Australia through to the Pacific Ocean via the Timor Sea, Arafura Sea, and Coral Sea to make the final trip. It was reportedly welcomed into Cairns with a water cannon salute.
The 71.2 metre-long Leeuwin Class survey ship, named after Melville Island, was originally commissioned in May 2000, launched in June 1998, and has previously been used by the ADF in a hydrographic survey role with the RAN Hydrographic Surface and as an asset with the federal government’s border protection operations.
HMAS Melville carries Atlas Fansweep multi-beam echo sounders, Atlas Hydrographic Deso single beam echo sounder, the ability to support an AS350B Squirrel helicopter, three nine-metre-long survey motorboats, and an STN Atlas 9600 ARPA navigation radar.
“With less than half of the area around Australia surveyed to acceptable standards, these survey ships greatly reduce this figure, making passage of vessels safer and help to protect Australia’s ocean environment,” according to a statement from the Royal Australian Navy.
“The RAN Hydrographic Service has responsibility for charting more than one-eighth of the world’s surface, stretching as far west as Cocos Island in the Indian Ocean, east to the Solomon Islands, and from the equator to the Antarctic. The RAN has six ships and one aircraft engaged in the task.”
Earlier this year, the survey ship conducted the first official berthing alongside a new Kuru Wharf at HMAS Coonawarra in Darwin in the Northern Territory.
Personnel from HMAS Melville will reportedly be reassigned into deployable teams using undersea autonomous drones and associated systems.
