The Polar Duke revisited

The Duke in Singapore, September 2012. With a blue hull. Photo from shipspotting.com.

What I do know about what happened after the USAP contract ended...at some point the owners, Rieber Shipping, converted it to a seismic research vessel and renamed it the Duke. It was assigned to a Rieber subsidiary, Exploration Resources, which was subsequently spun off into a separate company in 2005. Exploration Resources was acquired the same year by CGG. (Here's a November 2005 SEC 6-K report documenting the Duke as part of the General Company of Geophysics (GCC) fleet and describing the spinoff and CGG acquisition). CGG became part of CGGVeritas in 2007, and after further acquisitions was renamed CGG in 2013 The vessel was renamed the CGG Duke...as such it was spotted in Wellington Harbor on 27 June 2007 (left, another photo from shipspotting.com). It was decommissioned in 2009 as described in this 2009 CGGVeritas annual report. Note that Rieber Shipping (now GCRieber) subsequently commissioned a new and larger seismic survey vessel named Polar Duke, built in 2010.

The decommissioning didn't last long...the Duke was reflagged to the Bahamas in 2009, and as of 2017 was being operated by Gardline CGGV, a joint venture between Gardline Geosurvey and CGG (Wikipedia article most recently updated in December 2016). Unfortunately, in June 2018 the Duke was no longer listed as part of Gardline's fleet. Here's an archived 2016 GardlineCGG data page with floor plans, although the data sheet is no longer available.

History...here's the 1987 ITT/ANS brochure about the Polar Duke...compare the floor plans.

Most recent info I could find...here's a photo of the Duke in Jiangyin, China as of December 2017. This balticshiping.com page has a number of newer and older photos.