A unique 'flipping' ship from the 1960s, capable of rotating from horizontal to vertical – as if sinking – is set to be saved from the scrapheap.

Flip, which stands for Floating Instrument Platform, was built for the US Navy in 1962 to carry out acoustic research but was finally decommissioned last year.

But before she could be broken up, DEEP – a UK-based ocean engineering company with a mission to make ocean exploration as ubiquitous as space exploration – brought her to Europe to refit her with state-of-the-art technology.

"Flip was intended to be scrapped, to be cut in pieces," said her captain, Giulio Maresca.

"So we literally save from death this amazing piece of history," he said.

Half ship, half submarine, Flip is 108 meters (355 feet) long and can sink more than 90 meters (295 feet) of its hull vertically in less than 30 minutes, by taking on around 600 tons of water. It reverses the process and returns to the horizontal by expelling the water using compressed air.

When vertical the vessel has unparalleled stability even in the roughest seas, making it an ideal platform to study wave dynamics, sound propagation and oceanography.

Part 2: Unique 'flipping' US Navy ship upcycled for ocean exploration. – Reuters

One of DEEP's other projects, aside from Flip, is pioneering a new era of continuous underwater presence with a 3D printed habitat, called Sentinel, which will allow comfortable living at depths of up to 200m for up to 28 days at a time, doing away with all the wasted time before and after a normal diving expedition.

"Our goals are to bring technological advances to Flip as well as make her accessible to a much broader market," said DEEP CEO Kristen Tertoole.

"We believe that our biggest challenge when it comes to the ocean is not necessarily pollution, but our ignorance. And we believe that Flip can be an important part of learning more about the ocean."

The refitting of the ship will take place over the next 18 months in a shipyard in the south of France.