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Ready for a lift?

Alvin breaks the surface and engineering assistant Mike McCarthy talks to the pilot in preparation for recovery operations after a LADDER III project dive to a hydrothermal vent site in November 2007. (LADDER stands for LArval Dispersal on the Deep East Pacific Rise.) Alvin was used to deploy instruments, to survey the new vents as they recover from the 2005–2006 eruptions, and for instrument recovery.
(Photo by Susan Mills, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)