VDGIF Gets 2 New Safeboats
Conservation police officers with the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) unveiled their newest tool in serving as First Tier Responders for small craft engaged in suspicious water-based activities today at an event at Osborne Boating Landing. The two, new 21-foot, 12-man Safeboats will enhance conservation police officers' surveillance, detection, and intervention capabilities as they patrol the Norfolk, Newport News and Portsmouth harbor areas. The event included brief remarks by Secretary of Natural Resources L. Preston Bryant, Jr., Secretary of Public Safety John W. Marshall, and Assistant to the Governor for Commonwealth Preparedness Robert P. Crouch followed by a demonstration of how effective a tool the Safeboats will be on the water.
Initial Cleanup Completed on NS Savannah
A historic nuclear-powered ship that probably attracted more barnacles than tourists while serving as a floating museum off Mount Pleasant has completed the first leg of its rehabilitation. But the next phase of work won't take place in the Lowcountry, as federal officials had once considered. The NS Savannah, the world's first nuclear-powered cargo and passenger vessel, is being restored, possibly for its second stint as a floating museum, according to its owner, MarAd. Colonna's Shipyard in Norfolk, Va., recently completed an initial $995,000 cleanup and renovation of the 596-foot ship, which was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1991, when it was still part of the naval museum at state-owned Patriots Point in Mount Pleasant.
