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Here is a story in one photo. The Reedbuck is engaged in maintaining the heading of an off take tanker which is connected by the bow to an FPSO in the Lula Field offshore Brazil. It has only just been connected so the tanker is still at 90 degrees to the FPSO, and the captain has probably asked his steward to bring up his brown trousers. We can see that the tanker has two stern thrusters, so are they working or have weather conditions overcome them. And the Reedbuck - a nice little NED 8167L anchor-handler built in Poland in 2010 with a handy 13,000 bhp available provided by two Cats.
Up in the Cromarty Firth, which remains the favourite place in UK waters for laying up semi-submersibles, about a hundred miles north of Aberdeen, there is still the construction yard at Nigg which was last used in anger to build the Hutton TLP, back in 1983 - since removed and bits of it sold. The facility has sort of hung on effectively being used for odd construction jobs, and in this photo it can be seen to be in the hands of the "Global Energy Group" and the FPSO Haewene Brim is in the dry dock being fixed up.
Photo taken by Alistair Morton back in 2013 and posted here on 15th August 2018.
I read in the newsletter provided by Seabrokers in Aberdeen that the well known Ice-breaking support vessel the Botnica has bee hired by "Baffinland Iron Mines" as an escort icebreaker. The ship was built in 1998 and is one of three icebreaking support vessels built in Finland, the others being the Fennica and the Nordica. The idea was that they would work in the oil business in the summer and break ice for Baltic ports in the winter. They were not a total success, but I think they have, nevertheless, continued to work. Baffinland Iron Mines will apparently ship ore from the island annually for a few months starting in July, and have overcome many obstacles to do so.