Vessel Charter for Benthic Habitat Investigations in the Eastern Bering Sea

The National Marine Fisheries Service has a requirement for a vessel charter to conduct research surveys for benthic habitat investigations in the Eastern Bering Sea. Contractor shall provide all personnel, equipment, tools, materials, supervision, transportation and services necessary to perform these services. The contractor will be required to provide a support platform for benthic habitat research in the eastern Bering Sea. The cruise objective for the 14-day charter period is to gather habitat information and estimate egg case numbers from digital images gathered from an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) at skate nesting sites along the Bering Sea slope between 80 and 400 meters in depth. Bottom trawls may be conducted on demand at selecting nesting sites to collect specimens to determine egg case viability. The contract resulting from this solicitation will consists of a survey period of 14 days to take place in the time frame August 1, 2009 through September 4, 2009. Minimum continuous horsepower output from main engine is 1,000 HP. Further vessel requirements will be included in the solicitation. The proposed contract is 100% set-aside for small business concerns. The NAICS code for this procurement is 483112 and the size standard is 500 employees. All responsible and fully responsive sources may submit a proposal which will be considered by the Agency. Any resulting contract will be awarded as a firm-fixed price contract. Solicitation documents will be made available for download on or about June 6, 2009 at http://www.fedbizopps.gov/. Paper copies of this solicitation will not be issued. Interested parties should use the FedBizOpps [Add To Watchlist] and [Add Me To Interested Vendors] features which provide a notification when the RFP becomes available for download as well as all postings of information associated with this solicitation, thereafter. Each potential bidder is responsible for checking the FedBizOpps website to gain all current information related to the solicitation. The solicitation and any further announcements regarding the solicitation will be posted only at http://www.fedbizopps.gov/. The estimated response due date is July 7, 2009; however, the actual date offers are due will be stated within the solicitation documents. All questions of any nature regarding this procurement are to be sent to Contracting Officer, Paul Reed at Paul.J.Reed@noaa.gov. All vendors doing business with the Government are required to be registered with the Central Contractor Registry (CCR). NO award can be made unless the vendor is registered in CCR. For additional information and to register in CCR, please access the following web site: http:///www.ccr.gov/. In order to register with the CCR and to be eligible to receive an award from this acquisition office, all bidders must also have a Dun & Bradstreet Number. A Dun & Bradstreet number may be acquired free of charge by contacting Dun & Bradstreet on-line at https://www.dnb.com/product/eupdate/requestOptions.html or by phone at (800) 333-0505. This procurement also requires bidders to complete the On-Line Representations and Certifications Application (ORCA) at https://orca.bpn.gov/.