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Alvin: Good Enough to Eat

When University of Florida Prof. Mike Perfit and Renee Kattell recently held a party in Gainesville, Fla., to commemorate their wedding earlier in the summer, DSV Alvin made an appearance as well. Perfit has made many dives in Alvin over the years, including one during which the first mid-ocean ridge eruption was discovered on the East Pacific Rise. He is also a former chair of the Deep Submergence Science Committee of UNOLS, where he provided guidance to WHOI’s National Deep Subermgence Facility and the oceanographic community. Kattell is an accomplished cake artist and fashioned both the couple’s traditional cake (background) as well as the one depicting Alvin exploring a hydrothermal vent site populated by tubeworms, mussels, and crabs. Alvin is currently undergoing a major overhaul and will return to supporting oceanographic research in late 2012.(Photo by Daniel Fornari, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)