In spring 2016 the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council opened an online poll to name its new 200 million pound polar research ship, then being built in Birkenhead. BBC radio presenter James Hand suggested Boaty McBoatface, a nod to an owl named Hootie McOwlface, and it won 33 percent of the vote against 11 percent for second place, inspiring the term McBoatfacing. Science minister Jo Johnson named the ship RRS Sir David Attenborough instead, a name that placed fifth in the poll, and Duncan Wingham proposed the compromise: give the winning name to one of the yellow submersibles carried aboard.

That submersible is an Autosub Long Range vehicle run by the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton: about 700 kilograms, 3.6 meters long, rated to 6,000 meters, with a range of at least 2,500 kilometers and no tether, running preprogrammed missions for months. On its April 2017 maiden mission, DynOPO, launched from the RRS James Clark Ross, it traveled 180 kilometers through the Orkney Passage at depths up to 4,000 meters. Its data showed that stronger Southern Ocean winds drive internal waves that break over undersea ridges and mix cold bottom water with warmer water above, a sea level rise mechanism missing from climate models, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

• Later in 2017 it tested chemical sensors in the North Sea to detect leaks from future carbon storage sites.
• In early 2018 it spent 51 hours under Antarctic ice, 20 of them beneath a 550 meter thick ice shelf.
• In August 2024 it made a 55 day, 2,000 kilometer voyage from Iceland to Scotland studying the ocean carbon pump.
• Its missions feed the UK Polar Explorer program for primary and secondary schools.
• In December 2017 Boaty McBoatface appeared as a category on Jeopardy.