Monday, May 31, 2010

UFO - unidentified floating object


Do any of my blog readers know what this odd boat is and its purpose? It is located a few miles west of Bob Sikes Bridge in the Intracoastal Waterway. I haven't seen anything like it in this area before, but I've only been here a few years. You may click on the photo to enlarge it.

5 comments:

Sara said...

I used to work for the oil and gas industry. My first job was for a salvage company. Aside from salvaging marine vessels, they also could rip out existing off shore pipeline and lay new pipe. They looked like this boat with cranes on them all with different capabilities.

Aside from the poles sticking up this looks a lot like the vessels we had for off shore salvage. But ours did not have these weird poles on them.

Barrier Island Girl said...

Thanks, Sara. That gets me one step closer. Perhaps they are laying new pipe in the sound. I really appreciate your input!

DJ

Mark in LA said...

I occasionally work a shrimp boat in Louisiana. The boat captain told me these were "Jack-up Rigs" or "Jack-em-up Rigs." I don't know if that's the official name or just a colloquialism.
You'll see lots of these type of boats around oil and gas rigs. They can jack the body of the vessel up those long poles.
JS from SC sent me a link to your blog. I live in Andalusia, and spend a lot of time fishing and diving in the local waters around Gulf Breeze and Pensacola.

Anonymous said...

This is a treasure finders search equipment.The "boat" is lowered to the sea floor where interesting items are scooped up.

Barrier Island Girl said...

Thanks, Mark & Debbie. Mark, after I saw your comment, I did a search and found similar boats/rigs exactly as you said. Don't know why this hasn't been in the news though. Perhaps they are worried they will frighten us. Too late! We're scared to death of this catastrophic oil spill and it hasn't even reached our beaches in NW Florida yet.