RV Soela

The ship was built in 1965 by AG Weser, Bremen. The ship was long, with a beam of . She had a GRT of 693. A detailed description of the vessel as equipped for fisheries research by CSIRO is given in Maxwell, 1980. ==History==

As La Canche, the vessel was built for commercial fishing operations in French waters. In 1979 she was purchased by an Australian company, KFV Fisheries (Qld) Pty Ltd, later under the name of the Soela Fishing Company, for charter to the CSIRO Division of Fisheries and Oceanography in Cronulla, New South Wales, as a replacement for the Division's previous research vessel, RV Courageous, which had completed 52 research cruises for the Division between 1975 and 1979. The vessel was renamed Soela, underwent a refit in Fremantle and entered service with CSIRO in November 1979, with an official handover in 1980. For CSIRO, she carried out 60 fishery surveys in regions including the Australian North West Shelf, the Great Australian Bight and in waters off Tasmania. She was fitted for both demersal (=bottom) and pelagic (=midwater) trawling and, in addition to the ship's crew, had accommodation for 11 scientists. ==Science data access==

Access to science data from 60 voyages of the Soela is provided via the "Data Trawler" application of the CSIRO NCMI (National Collections and Marine Infrastructure) Information and Data Centre. ==References==