The Maritime
Museum allows visitors in safety vest since two weeks working in the Dutch
offshore sector up close. This happens in the interactive exhibition
"Offshore Experience". A million project, even the most expensive to
the Maritime Museum (since 1873) ever launched, says museum assistant Judith Fraise.
Not for nothing: "Worldwide, Dutch companies at the forefront of offshore
technology, but the people on the street know that much."
The exhibition
should change this. "Also to show how large the importance of energy use
is daily life for us all we eventually use energy, such as when cooking,
driving and charging our phones. In addition, there is the future change very
much: the offshore sector is in a transition from fossil fuels to CO2-neutral
energy. "
Wailing wind
After entering a
movie about disaster drills and safety of visitors - with helmet and safety reflective
vest - a "drilling platform" surrounded by a huge movie
projection wall which gives them a view of 360 degrees on the sea. Waves roll
in and out, the wind brushes heard and felt over the heads of small and larger
distance you see sailing ships. Periodically there protrudes a storm. Then the
wind howls and the waves grow.
For filming the
sky makers climbed the lighthouse of Namaland. The surging waves eyes lifelike.
Fraise: "A visitor, who worked on an oil rig, told me that he recognized
the reality in our simulation."
On the platform,
visitors can start using commands such as maneuvering a ship in severe storm,
to determine the proper location of a wind farm, running gas drilling and allowing
countries a rattling approaching helicopter. The better you perform the task,
the more points you earn.
Show in the middle
of the room impressive scale models (scale 1: 100) of ships from the offshore
sector the seas worldwide. The showpiece is a huge model of the largest ship in
the world, the brand new "pioneering spirit". Owner is the
Swiss-Dutch offshore company Allseeds, with about 2500 employees. The super
catamaran, from August to now, all rigs can sail to its destination or
scrapping copies of their pedestal and bring lights.
Deep Seabed
With an elevator
dropping museum visitors then off. When getting them imagine them 300 meters
below sea level, far below the drilling platform. Further floating jellyfish
and swimming fish. A diver focuses squatted engaged in welding. Fraise, muted:
"divers can still operate at this depth. But look, if you walk you see the
situation further on a seabed of 3000 meters depth. "The presence of
people can no longer be there. Monitored and controlled via robots. A true copy
of such operated underwater vehicle remotely hovers below the ceiling. The
simulated deep seabed you see such "ROV" (remotely operated
underwater vehicle) delving around swimming above the gas installations.
Besides getting pipelines on the bed carefully a load of bricks plunged over -
protection.
The sea and deep
seabed simulation is set up according to the "Pepper's Ghost"
principle: using mirrors creates a lifelike illusion of the marine world to the
eye of the visitor, as if you can walk right through.
Using the
exhibition -one of the eight long-term exhibitions in the building- directs the
museum, along with the many offshore companies that contributed to it,
moreover, emphatically also look at the youth. Fraise in reflective uniform:
"We hope to interest schoolchildren for a technical study and employment
in the maritime sector."
