Server: Microsoft-IIS/2.0 Date: Thu, 20 Nov 1997 18:59:21 GMT Content-Type: text/html Accept-Ranges: bytes Last-Modified: Tue, 02 Sep 1997 13:16:54 GMT Content-Length: 9138
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PRESS RELEASE
MOSS POINT, Miss... The U. S. Navy and Halter Marine, Inc. a subsidiary of Halter Marine Group, Inc. (AMEX:HLX) Gulfport, Miss. celebrated the birth of a new ship here today with the ceremonial keel laying of T-AGS*64, a 329 foot oceanographic ship at the Halter Moss Point shipyard. In a traditional ceremony, four high ranking Navy career officers welded their initials into a plate of steel that will become an integral part of the ship's keel. They are: Vice Admiral James B. Perkins III, Commander, Military Sealift Command; Rear Admiral Paul E. Tobin Jr., Oceanographer of the Navy; Rear Admiral Henry C. McKinney (retired), President and Chief Executive Officer, United States Navy Memorial Foundation, and Captain Jack M. Kennedy (retired), President of the Navy League of the United States. The ship has not yet been named because the Navy has made an unusual departure from its tradition of having Navy historians sending well-researched recommendations to the Secretary of the Navy, who chooses the ship's name. T-AGS 64 will be named as a result of a nationwide kindergarten through twelfth grade student competition to propose a name for the ship. The program is intended to broaden public awareness of the Navy and its oceanographic mission through the 1998 International Year of the Oceans, and Halter's role in designing and building the ship. The ship naming contest supported by numerous Navy affiliates, including the Navy League and the Navy Memorial Foundation, will begin during the first semester of the 1998 school year (September through December 1997). Winners from each state will be competitively selected by mid-March 1998. A national level awards panel will then convene in Washington, DC to determine the top teams in each of the two age categories, kindergarten through sixth grade and seventh through twelfth grade. In May 1998, a representative group from each of the two winning teams will be invited to attend an awards reception and presentation in Washington. At that time the Secretary of the Navy will announce the overall winner and the name for the T-AGS 64. Representatives of the final winning team will be sponsored to attend the christening and launch of the newly named ship, which is scheduled for the summer 1998. Students in public, private and home schools from the U. S., U. S. territories, overseas dependent schools, and Bureau of Indian Affairs schools are eligible to participate. Proposed names and project descriptions must be submitted to State Navy League offices by December 31, 1997. Interested parties should contact Mr. Patrick Dennis, 202-762-0253 or Ms. Gail Cleere, 202-762-1045. Contest details and other related information is available on the worldwide web site: http://oceanographer.navy.mil. John Dane III, Chairman, President and CEO of Halter Marine Group, Inc. said, "We are delighted the Navy has taken this approach in the naming of its newest oceanographic ship being built here at Halter. I encourage the school age children of Halter employees, and all teachers, parents and students in Mississippi to participate in this endeavor. The winner, if a Mississippian, will bring added honor to the people of our state since ten of the Navy's 11 oceanographic research ships built since 1983, have been built by Halter Marine here in Mississippi." The Oceanographer of the Navy's fleet of survey ships criss-cross the world's oceans conducting surveys. Besides mapping the ocean floor to update nautical charts, these ships typically conduct oceanographic sampling of the physical properties of the water column as well as the composition of the ocean floor. They launch and recover instrument packages, do acoustic property measurements, and have the capability to process and analyze the data onboard with the latest computer technology. The T-AGS 60 class ships carry the latest in over-the-side sensors and sampling equipment including bathythermographs, bottom corers, and seismic equipment. Seventy-five percent of the oceans either have never been surveyed or were surveyed many years ago using crude instruments. Recent surveys and new technologies have revealed a world of bizarre features, such as underwater volcanic cones, enormous featureless abyssal plains, and deep canyons larger than anything seen on dry land. The new ship, equipped with the latest in oceanographic surveying equipment, will help the Navy's ships to operate safely above, on and below the surface of the ocean. Halter Marine Group, Inc. includes 18 shipyards in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida. The company specializes in the design, construction, conversion and repair of a wide variety of vessels and mobile offshore rigs for commercial, government and pleasure boat markets. Shipyards of Halter Marine have built more than 2000 vessels in the past 40 years.
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