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RMS Titanic, Meet DSV Alvin

The wreckage of RMS Titanic was discovered on the seafloor 25 years ago this week. A year later, a WHOI-led expedition returned with the deep-sea vehicle Alvin and Jason Jr., a prototype robotic vehicle tethered to Alvin via a 60-meter fiber-optic cable and equipped with lights and cameras. WHOI scientist Bob Ballard called it “the floating eyeball.” J.J. photographed Alvin pulling alongside Titanic. “The biggest danger to any dive on Alvin is entanglement on the bottom,” wrote former Alvin pilot Will Sellers in a memoir. “If I were to get us stuck and was unable to free the sub, we would become a bit of Titanic history ourselves.”

(Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)