A submersible research craft like Alvin allows scientists to explore the deep sea. Photo: NOAA
The ocean covers 70 percent of Earth’s surface and yet it’s one of our greatest mysteries. The ocean is so vast and so deep, that much of it has yet to be explored. For years, Alvin, a three-person submersible research craft, has been helping scientists explore that underwater world and recently, scientific advancements have allowed it to dive even deeper.
Explorer Robert Ballard helped develop Alvin at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts in the 1960s. Since then he’s used Alvin to uncover hydrothermal vents, explore underwater mountain ranges, and to find the remains of the RMS Titanic in 1985. Upgrades have recently been made to Alvin and over the summer, it reached its deepest depth to date: four miles (6,453 meters).
The record was set on a dive to the Mid-Cayman Rise in Puerto Rico. Scientists visited the Beebe Hydrothermal Vent Field, where they collected samples from the ocean floor. One of the scientists on board Alvin was Anna Michel, an associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
“That was the first time I went to a hydrothermal vent site in person and to me, that was just absolutely incredible,” Michel told CNN. “We were able to bring humans to see places that we’ve not gone to before with Alvin.”
Prior to the record setting dive, Alvin was only capable of diving down 4,500 meters (2.7 miles). That all changed after 18 months of overhauling the submersible with upgrades including a 4K imaging system, a new hydraulic manipulator arm, more powerful thrusters, new motor controllers and an integrated command and control system. With those upgrades, the machine is now opening doors for scientists, allowing them to have direct access to the deepest parts of the ocean and explore places that humans have never been.
“Alvin is built and maintained to enable new discoveries and provide new insight into the way our planet works,” Michel said. “Every generation of scientists presents new questions, and Alvin has responded in ways that have rewritten textbooks. There’s a new generation waiting to use the sub, and to them we say, ‘Alvin is ready, where do you want to go?'”
