Fifty years ago, the deep sea vehicle Alvin made its first free dive, submerging to 35 feet below the waves. Since then, DSV Alvin has been repeatedly overhauled and upgraded, keeping pace with current technology in countless dives and endless missions carrying humans into the deep blue sea.
Research vessels come in all shapes and sizes for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. Over the past eight decades, the research institute has purchased smuggling ships, converted troop carriers, commissioned deep sea drillers, and built a catamaran out of surplus pontoons.
While the Chinese are busy scouting the best under-sea sites to pillage for precious metals, America's venerable oceanic exploration sub, the newly-renovated DSV Alvin, continues to uncover scores of deep sea life forms that science has never even seen. Here are just a few of the more exotic animals Alvin has come…
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute has announced that its hybrid ROV, the Nereus, was lost over the weekend and is unrecoverable, having sunk to the bottom of the 10,000 meter Kermadec Trench.
Last year, James Cameron became the third person in history to venture to the deepest point on Earth, the Mariana Trench's Challenger Deep. He was also the first person to ever make the trip alone – a trip he made in a badass submersible, fittingly named the DEEPSEA CHALLENGER. Now, one year after his historic dive, …
Imagine the Earth in your mind's eye. Now round up all the water on the planet into a sphere (we're talking oceans, icecaps, atmosphere, everything — even the water bound up in you and me). How big do you think that sphere would be compared to the Earth?
After sinking, the RMS Titanic lay undisturbed beneath 12,000 feet of freezing North Atlantic water for years, but in 1985 its watery tomb was finally breached by another marquee vessel—the crown prince of HOVs.
In the last several hundred years, human activity has shifted large quantities of the world's carbon from long-term storage (i.e. carbon bound up in rocks, fossil fuels, and forests) into forms of short-term storage such as croplands and pastures, which tend to store less carbon for shorter periods of time.
Have you ever listened to the complex sounds of a whale song and wished you could understand what's being said? Well here's your chance to help scientists make sense of these enigmatic underwater calls.
