Kit10Phish Explains It All: Largest Yacht in the World: Rev

She is purpose-built for scientific charter and environmental research missions.[14]

Owned by: Kjell Inge Rokke

Noah Kirsch, who wrote the Forbes piece said it perfectly: Kjell Inge Rokke amassed a $1.7 billion fortune by stripping the seas of oil and fish. Now he says he wants to clean up the mess. Meet the biggest contradiction on water.

Rokke’s boats caught huge quantities of fish, thanks in part to subsidies from the Norwegian government, generating more than $18 million in annual sales (roughly $45 million in today’s dollars). At one point, they pulled in 600,000 to 800,000 pollock per day, and “eventually Rokke’s company controlled 40% of the American pollock harvest,” writes ecologist Kevin M. Bailey in his book Billion-Dollar Fish. As American Seafoods expanded globally, Bailey says, it “was involved in enterprises from Russia to Argentina that were accused of overfishing.” Rokke disputes this.

In 1996, Rokke bought a controlling interest in Aker, one of Norway’s largest conglomerates, concentrated in shipbuilding and offshore drilling services. Aker is now the name of Rokke’s public company; his portfolio collectively generates $9.4 billion in annual revenue.

Then in 2002, Rokke was struggling to obtain a license to operate his 56-foot yacht, Celina Bella. He skirted the law, paying Swedish officials $10,000 for the permit. “I wanted to have the license done in the least painful way,” he says, claiming he didn’t know the arrangement was illegal. Prosecutors discovered the payoff, and Rokke was sentenced to 120 days in jail. He served 23 *eye-roll* two justice systems, amIright?!

Once free, Rokke kept investing in energy, which makes up about a fifth of Norway’s economy. He established an offshore oil outfit, Aker Drilling, in 2005 and acquired Marathon Oil Norway for $2.7 billion in 2014.

But he worried about his legacy. “I haven’t invested in any infrastructure, I haven’t built a road,” he remembers thinking. “Basically, I’m a harvester.” To that end, in 2017 he established REV Ocean, the nonprofit that oversees the superyacht.

REV Ocean is the flagship of Norwegian billionaire businessman Kjell Inge Røkke's REV Ocean initiative. In an interview with the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten (published 1 May 2017) Røkke said he planned to give away most of his fortune. As a further step in this plan he joined the Giving Pledge in 2017, and founded the REV Ocean initiative.

The plan is simple. Rokke, 61, will let scientists use the yacht for free to plot oceanic garbage patches, assess fish stocks and test water acidity levels. When they aren’t onboard, he’ll use it himself for pleasure, or rent it to the world’s glitterati and donate the proceeds to conservation projects.

Focused on three main points: Plastic pollution + Climate change + Overfishing and environmental impacts of fishing.

Led by former WWF Norway CEO Nina Jensen, REV Ocean is working to improve understanding of the ocean and foster concrete solutions through three initiatives: the world's largest research and expedition vessel (REV), the World Ocean Headquarters and an open, global data platform.

For outsiders, changing career from a well-known environmental organization for a new one "based on" a huge vessel, can sound strange. What made you make the final decision? How was the jump into REV Ocean?

It was a very difficult decision to make. When I was initially given the offer, I turned it down immediately. Working for WWF was always my life goal, and that's where I thought I would have the biggest impact. But, of course, working for the organization for 15 years, I also saw that there are limits to what environmental activists can do on their own, and unless we're able to get the big industrial players, capitalists, philanthropists on board, we will never have a chance to save life in the ocean.

So, I worked with Kjell Inge Røkke for the broader part of a year before I made the final decision to jump ship, so to speak. During that year, it became very clear to me that he was equally as passionate as I am in terms of making a difference for the ocean. He is also a billionaire, with the capital and the means to make a difference. So, at the end of the day, the decision became quite easy, because then I could combine my conservation skills and passion, with his industrial skills, and passion, and capital, and hopefully be able to make a real difference for the ocean.

We have an ROV [Remotely Operated underwater Vehicle], that has already been on scientific missions to the Arctic to look at various deep-sea habitats and found new species that have never been discovered before, just as an example. And our submarine will be ready at the end of May and put into operation from June. Both of these two pieces of scientific equipment will be offered to the scientific community to contribute to knowledge gathering, mapping the seafloor, and finding solutions to our three priorities, plastics, climate change, and overfishing.

There is an incredible amount of data already out there connected with the ocean. I think there are more than 200 data portals or databases linked to the ocean, but there isn't one place that combines them all and enables us to make meaningful analyses based on all of this data. That's why we launched the Ocean Data Platform that will combine all of the open ocean data sources that are out there in one place and provide scientists, decision-makers, and others to be able to use this data in more meaningful ways.

It will be operating in the same way in all three modes, but of course, a different service level is expected whether you are in charter mode or in science mode. That will be very different, but sustainability will be an integral part throughout all three modes of operation. This includes all the equipment and products that we will have onboard, that they will need to be responsibly and sustainably sourced, eliminating waste, trying to as best possible be a plastic-free ship, reducing our energy consumption, and having all sorts of mechanisms for energy reuse and regeneration. We also expect a certain kind of behavior from people on board in terms of managing their own footprint, of course, and everything from the water to the foods, to various types of activities that we will undertake, everything will be done to reduce our footprint.

Initially, we wanted it to be a fully electric ship, but when we're intending to be out to sea for 120 days consecutively, it's simply not feasible. There are no charging stations in the middle of the Southern Ocean, so, at this point in time, it's just not possible. It's inevitable that we will have a big footprint, and fuel consumption will be the biggest footprint that we have. So, in addition to having all sorts of energy recovery systems onboard, large battery packs, solar panels, and all types of green and renewable energy that we can possibly integrate, we will offset for the footprint that we cannot reduce. That means investing in various types of blue carbon projects, and the one that we've been investing in up until now is a mangrove restoration project in Myanmar.