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Building Deep Sea Vehicles

Andy Bowen and Chris German examine the interior of a robotic vehicle in the National Deep Submergence Laboratory at WHOI, a state-of-the-art lab for development of advanced vehicles for exploring the deep ocean. Bowen and German are Director and chief scientist, respectively, of the National Deep Submergence Facility (NDSF), a national center that oversees operation of deep ocean vehicles for the U.S. oceanographic community. Bowen led the team that built Nereus, a unique vehicle that dove to the ocean’s deepest point in May 2009.  German, a geochemist, has recently searched for hydrothermal vent activity on research cruises off Chile, the Caribbean’s Cayman Trough and the Southern Ocean. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)