Royal Netherlands Institute for Sea Research

Background info & contact

The National Marine Facilities (NMF) is a department at NIOZ. NMF provides researchers working in the Netherlands with ships and seagoing equipment to carry out research at sea and in the coastal zone. Furthermore, NMF provides qualified personnel to operate the equipment and support for data management.

The NMF department is divided into 4 units, each with a specific task: Office/Fleet, Support, Development and Data Management.

To facilitate science at sea, NMF operates the National Research Fleet of the Netherlands, consisting of 3 research vessels: RV Pelagia, RV Navicula and RV Adriaen Coenen (which has recently replaced RV Stern). In addition, NMF maintains and operates diverse pool of seagoing equipment for use on both our own and third-party research vessels. Most of the NMF equipment is serviced in-house, guaranteeing optimum availability.

Access to NMF facilities is free for researchers working in the Netherland that have received seagoing research grants with ship time included from NWO, the EU or other funding agents. More information on the conditions for access to the NMF facilities can be found here www.nwo.nl/vaartijd

Requests for access to RV Pelagia, RV Navicula and the national equipment pool can be submitted via the web-based Marine Facilities Planning tool.

NMF also is the point of contact for marine scientists from the Netherlands to gain access to the European research fleet operated by our partners in the Ocean Facilities Exchange Group (OFEG).