Luckily its popcorn and not a sticky blob of oil that floats around in Odense harbour. The popcorn is thrown into the harbour for a demonstration of how to fight oil contamination. The demonstration is one of the activities offered by the environmental protection vessel GUNNAR THORSON during the festival ”Under Sail For 1000 Years”.

“We use popcorn because it floats similar to oil” explains 1st Lieutenant Trygve Erthmann who is the operations officer on GUNNAR THORSON. On board the 56 meter long, orange vessel schoolchildren follow the demonstration where GUNNAR THORSON’s rubber dinghy deploys a floating barrier to catch the ‘popcorn-oil’.

GUNNAR THOSON recovers the floating  barrier.  Photo: Michael Linden-Vørnle, RDN

Fighting oil pollution is one of the most important but the only task for GUNNAR THORSON. “The vessel is built for environmental protection at sea but is also equipped to handle other tasks” says Trygve Erthmann and elaborates “We have for example a complete laboratory for marine environment research whith is used by the National Environmental Research Institute. Several times each year they rent the vessel for a week and we sail them to a number of fixed measurement positions”. Other tasks include everyday maritime activities like transport, towing and surveillance.

Active fighting of pollution is thus a minor part of the daily life for the 16 man crew – and thats good! In recent years GUNNAR THORSON has however several times participated in handling of larger oil spills. Most recently in 2003 where 1800 tons of oil leaked from the ship Fu Shan Hai that sank near the island of Bornholm.