Nation’s First Deep-Sea Research Submersible Keeps Going and Going…

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June 2, 1999

The nation’s first human-occupied deep-sea research submersible, the three-person Alvin, turns 35 on June 5,  but the tiny sub keeps on going and going.  Making between 175 and 200 dives each year to depths up to 4,500 meters (14,764 feet), the sub set yet another record when it passed Dive #3,400 in late May.  Alvin and its support vessel, the 274-foot Research Vessel Atlantis, are at work in the eastern Pacific and will spend the summer diving to the ocean floor off the coast of Washington and Oregon.  The ship and sub, part of the U.S. National Deep Submergence Facility operated by WHOI, left their home port at Woods Hole, MA, June 2, 1997 and are not scheduled to return to Woods Hole until October 2000.

(For further information about the ship and sub visit the WHOI web site at:
https://www.whoi.edu/what-we-do/explore/underwater-vehicles/hov-alvin/)

Still and video images available from the WHOI News Office at 508-289-3340