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.”