On Research Vessel Heraclitus
Copywriting: could an otherworldly ship slow the oceans’ catastrophic decline?
In California in 1972 a group of visionary and radical scientists, artists and explorers set out to build a boat to chart the awe and wonder of our earth’s waters and to chronicle and counter the growing threats to our marine environment.
With their own hands, and using funds they’d raised running a beatnik cafe, they created a totally new kind of boat, hacking an ancient Hong Kong-style rig with 20th-century techniques to make a ship that was a radical hybrid of ancient and modern, East and West.
Sleeping in sand-dunes beside the construction site, the small group designed and built a boat that would be incredibly robust but, thumbing its nose to a culture increasingly hooked on velocity, which would sail the world’s oceans deliberately slowly: a boat on which every crossing would be hard-won.
Their vision was to launch a vessel that would give equal emphasis to education and culture as it did to environmental action and research, and whose crew would be drawn from wildly different disciplines, cultures and countries—each of whom would commit not only to the boat’s environmental and cultural mission but also sign up to a radical experiment in community living.
It is this unique ethos, origin and purpose that sets Heraclitus utterly apart from other ships and makes it an incredible, floating symbol of the best of San Francisco counterculture: a ship purposefully crewed by as broad a spectrum of humanity on our planet as possible, which draws on ancient and modern technologies to defend ecology, and sets out to foster bonds of cooperation, collaboration and tolerance in the process.
It is also the stuff of folklore: a magical, otherworldly sight on our oceans since first setting sail in 1975.
‘In a sea where most of the vessels are commercial or navy, or sleek, fast super-yachts, Heraclitus has a clunky, pirate dream fairytale magic to it that most people — young, old, rich people, fishermen — seem to fall in love with,” explains the vessel’s long-standing captain, Claus Tober.
“So much of modern life is so driven by commerce and so mediated by technology. Heraclitus gives people the chance to experience a totally different way of life: to know what it feels like to approach a new continent from the ocean, driven only by the elements; what it is like to turn off all electronic aids and learn how to navigate by the stars, to connect to the celestial bodies and to the universe; allows them to see the ocean up close, rather than through a camera lens. It is vital that we continue to offer people this chance: it ignites in them a genuine passion for the ocean. These people go on to become catalysts for protecting the sea and the cultures it supports.’
The ship conducts:
- marine research and action programmes to protect the marine environment and to chronicle the quickening cycle of decline in our oceans’ ecosystems.
- leadership training programmes to inspire more people with a deep affinity, knowledge and enthusiasm for ocean ecologies and cultures and to equip them with invaluable leadership- and life-skills.
- cultural exchange programmes between crews and visiting cultures: staging everything from plays to exhibitions, and building a unique archive of the cultures and livelihoods of vulnerable coastal communities.
Heraclitus is the sister project to Biosphere 2, the legendary and radical ecological experiment in Arizona which allowed the study and manipulation of a biospheric system second only in size to the Earth itself, and which demonstrated the web and interconnectedness of all biological life. Both projects were established by Institute of Ecotechnics, which continues to manage Heraclitus.
Heraclitus has sailed our seas for 40 years, travelled 270,000 nautical miles, sailed all the world’s oceans except the Arctic, and staged 12 epic expeditions. It has been nautical home to over 500 seafarers from 46 countries aged 3 to 72.
Heraclitus’s conservation research and action missions include the protection ecosystems and biodiversity and documentation of the quickening cycle of decline in our oceans from ocean warming, acidification, sea-level rise and extreme weather to coral-reef bleaching, plastic pollution and overfishing.
It has been helmed and lovingly maintained by the successive waves of international and interdisciplinary scientists, artists and explorers that have made up its crew and all of whom have learnt sailing, navigation, rigging, engineering, and cuisine, and participated in the ship’s weekly curriculum, of meditation, theatre, poetry, science and cultural symposiums and silent suppers. Almost all of these individuals have been transformed by the experience, and many have gone on to pursue extraordinary careers in everything from marine biology to the arts.
It connects this international crew with coastal communities in a system of equal and reciprocal cultural exchange, chronicles maritime social histories and current affairs, from the slave-trade to migrant sea-routes. It is currently building a unique archive of vulnerable coastal communities’ cultures to create a body of knowledge of their traditions, history, stories, fairytales and anecdotes — a Grimms’ Tales of the Seas.
Heraclitus went into dry dock in Rosas, Spain, for a full rebuild in 2012 after almost 40 years of nonstop navigation. The vessel, re-engineered to be structurally stronger and more energy efficient, awaits a final injection of $1.3M to outfit it and encase the hull in concrete so she and her crew can pursue ever more ambitious and urgent expeditions.
“We are at a unique stage in our history. Never before have we had such an awareness of what we are doing to the planet and never before have we had the power to do something about it… we have a responsibility to care for our blue planet. The future of humanity, and indeed of all life on earth, now depends on us.” Sir David Attenborough, Broadcaster, Naturalist
“The ocean’s decline is an existential threat to us all… every second breath we take comes from the oxygen created by phytoplankton and other marine plants. The decline… [has] dire consequences for the future of many marine and terrestrial species, including humankind.” Peter Thomson, UN Special Envoy for The Oceans
