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Flying Fish

The research vessel Crawford is tied up at the WHOI pier with the wing of a P5 Marlin (P5M) seaplane strapped to its side in 1960. “An attempt was made to improve the measurement of bottom slopes at right angles to the ship’s path by placing a second transducer at some distance from the hull,” WHOI scientists wrote in the Institution’s annual report. “To do this, a P5M seaplane wing was hinged to the side of the ship as a 45-foot outrigger. Tests were carried out in the harbor on the Asterias, in Vineyard Sound on the Crawford, and on the high seas on a destroyer. An initial evaluation of this unusual arrangement indicates that it may provide a technique to determine the slope of the bottom topography on a single traverse of an area.”
(Photo by Allyn Vine, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)