Great Lakes Dredge & Dock has taken delivery of Acadia, the first US-flagged, Jones Act-compliant subsea rock installation vessel.
The vessel, built by Hanwha Philly Shipyard in Philadelphia, will immediately begin work supporting Equinor’s Empire Wind 1 project offshore New York before moving to Ørsted’s Sunrise Wind project.
Great Lakes also announced it has secured two new international offshore energy contracts with a major offshore wind developer that will keep Acadia working in Europe for most of 2027.
Designed to transport and precisely place rock on the seabed, Acadia provides scour protection for subsea cables, pipelines and offshore wind turbine foundations. The vessel is capable of carrying up to 20,000 metric tons of rock and is the first vessel of its kind built to comply with the Jones Act.
The delivery caps a multi-year investment by Great Lakes into the offshore energy market and comes about a year after the vessel was launched at Hanwha Philly Shipyard.
Construction generated more than one million labor hours using US-sourced steel and workers from several states, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, Texas and Louisiana.