Innovation Winter 2025/26

Deployment of under-water listening station. P hoto : JASCO A pplied S ciences

“But there’s a lot of things that you do on research vessels to make them quiet that aren’t viable in a commercial situation. For us, the challenge is understanding. What technologies can we take from those larger, expensive ships, and apply to tugs?” With far lower underwater noise levels than diesel vessels, RAL’s ElecTRA vessels became the first in the world to receive an underwater noise notation from their classification society, the American Bureau of Shipping. “We learned a lot from that process,” said Turner. Alternative fuels for extended routes For RAL, alternative fuels for tugboats are here to stay. According to the company's estimates, in 2019, only one out of every 10 new designs focused on low-emissions vessels; that has increased to seven in 10, as the firm develops more hybrid, electric, and low-carbon fuel tugboats. “We’re seeing good adoption,” said Phillips. On the horizon, they are particularly designing for reduced emissions boats that will help with long-range

The silence also brought an environmental bonus. Underwater noise from conventional tugboats and ships can disrupt marine life, masking communication, navigation, and hunting signals for whales, dolphins, and fish. Quieter electric tugs reduce this acoustic pollution, helping protect sensitive harbor and coastal ecosystems. In Vancouver, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans monitors the wellbeing of local species, like Southern Resident killer whales, in particular. The current design iterations put an emphasis on further reducing noise. The engineers are accustomed to designing for noise reduction in certain contexts, like building academic research vessels for oceanography. However, they had to adapt some of these concepts for the industrial context, which has more space, cost and application limitations. “There’s ways to improve noise even across electric motors, depending on factors like what electric motor you’re using: permanent magnet versus synchronous,” said Turner.

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Winter 2025/26

Innovation