This photo taken in Stockholm, Sweden in mid-August  may look like one of those moments when a furniture flat pack has been opened and you are wondering what to do next. In this case, however, it was a very different exercise. Salén Ship Management had just bought a Miko Polar Kit for carriage aboard its expedition cruise ship Hebridean Sky. Part of the deal included Miko conducting a crew training session to get them familiar with how a Polar Kit is used in an emergency. With the kit opened onto the deck John from Miko can be seen explaining its component parts.

Miko Polar Kit

The kit was unlike anything the crew had worked with before as it is a system developed by Miko to enable a hole above or below the ship’s water-line to be sealed by the crew even in the coldest polar seas. Featuring a large rolled-up magnetic patch, the system enables crew members in a small boat to un-roll it over a hole where the ship may have been punctured by ice. The Hebridean Sky is chartered to Noble Caledonia, a London-based travel company that that operates small ship exploration cruises to polar regions. Although it may never be used, a Miko Polar Kit will reassure cruise passengers that if the ship is accidentally holed by hard polar ice, Noble Cruises is one company that has an answer to the problem.

Miko Marine AS is based in Oslo, Norway, from where it also provides a range of unique salvage and support products for the marine industry. Most widely known is its range of magnetic plasters which can be used to seal hull damage and enable a vessel to be moved safely to a yard for permanent repair. The company’s most recent innovation has been the Moskito oil recovery tool that was recently introduced as the first device that can enable bunker fuels and other hydrocarbon cargoes to be quickly and easily extracted from the tanks of sunken vessels.