Rieber's RRS Ernest Shackleton has been secured under an option for another year by the UK's Natural Environment Research Council commencing from August 2014.

The Shackleton has been on a bareboat charter to the British Antarctic Survey via NERC since 1999, and the contract continues through until next year, working in Antarctica.

Sir Ernest Shackleton, who led three expeditions to Antarctica, died in 1922, and was one of the hereos of early Arctic exploration, along with Scott, and Norway's Roald Amundsen who discovered the South Pole in 1911.

_{Source: offshore.no}