Image

Upgraded Performance

In 1983, WHOI engineers spent long summer weeks in East Boston working to upgrade and convert the research vessel Atlantis II into the support ship for the human-occupied submersible Alvin. Here, a crane from the shipyard where the conversion took place lowers a new bow thruster onto the ship’s aft deck. The thruster provided a fine degree of control needed to launch and recover the sub and to carry out other oceanographic research. A2, as the ship came to be known, continued in its role until it retired in 1996 and was replaced by the current research vessel Atlantis. (Photo courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)