An Evergreen Marine Corp. container ship set sail last Saturday as part of a project to measure and monitor the distribution of greenhouse gases in the Pacific Ocean. The EVER ULTRA is the first commercial marine vessel equipped to measure marine hydrocarbon and halocarbon emissions and is part of an international Pacific Greenhouse Gases Measurement (PGGM) project.
Taiwanese scientists at National Central University initiated the PGGM project in 2008 with the cooperation of Evergreen Marine Corp., the National Science Council (NSC), the Environmental Protection Administration (EPA) and the University of Cambridge. The project will combine data from Taiwan's FORMOSAT-3/COSMIC satellite, which uses a constellation of six remote sensing micro-satellites to collect atmospheric data for weather prediction and for ionosphere, climate and gravity research.
The $70 million 980-foot-long vessel 5364 TEU Ever Ultra, which departed Saturday from the newly built Taipei Port destined for the Persian Gulf, is the first of three Evergreen ships that will participate in the project, with the second scheduled to sail to the Atlantic July 24, according to NCU.