50 Years of Ocean Discovery National Science Foundation 1950-2000 (2000) / Chapter Skim
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The History of Woods Hole's Deep Submergence Program
The History of Woods Hole's Deep Submergence Program
Pages 67-84
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From page 67... ...
in 1974. What led to the final acceptance of manned submersibles were the discoveries in 1977 and 1979 of hydrothermal vents and high-temperature "black smokers." Since that time, the Alvin program at Woods Hole has matured into a highly reliable and productive diving program fully integrated into a series of long-term research programs.
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From page 68... ...
This was not the case when he approached scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
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From page 69... ...
Quick action saved the crew and passenger, but Alvin disappeared beneath the waves, falling 1,585 m to the ocean floor. There it remained until 1969 when a heroic salvage operation returned it to Woods Hole.
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From page 70... ...
Although others have subsequently been established, scientists continue to return to this site even today. The site was selected in 1971 as the first permanent bottom station because it lay along a line between Woods Hole and Bermuda, where benthic biologists had conducted deep-sea dredging operations for more than six years.
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From page 71... ...
He was keenly aware of Woods Hole's submersible Alvin and knew it was already proving itself as an emerging geological mapping tool. In his letter, Dr.
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From page 72... ...
With this official endorsement for a comprehensive American Mid-Atlantic Ridge program, including the use of manned submersibles, Dr. Heirtzler and others could now move forward in formalizing a major joint program with the French, which would become Project FAMOUS.
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From page 73... ...
On the way back from the FAMOUS research site in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, the Alvin was used to carry out a series of dives along the New England Seamount Chain, revealing ancient volcanic terrain covered by a thick layer of manganese and phosphorite similar to that encountered on the Blake Plateau. Although Project FAMOUS was capturing the headlines in the early 1970s, scientists continued to use manned submersibles for their more traditional applications on the continental margins.
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From page 74... ...
Clearly, cold bottom waters within the rift valley at a temperature of 3 to 4°C could easily enter the ocean floor and must penetrate to the hot rock region surrounding the magma chambers below. Once heated and thermally expanded, these highly enriched geothermal fluids should rise back to the surface of the rift valley floor, exiting as hot springs along its axis.
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From page 75... ...
The expedition's destination was a point 640 kilometers west of the coast of Ecuador, along the rift that separates the fast-spreading Cocos and Nazca plates in the Pacific Ocean. Our plan was to concentrate on the sites where seafloor temperature anomalies recorded by the earlier Scripps-Oregon State-Woods Hole expedition had suggested the existence of hydrothermal vents.
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From page 76... ...
Then, we were looking for hydrothermal vents and had no idea of the oases. Now, we were trying to locate the same sites we had visited before, in a place where there were no identifying landmarks either above or beneath the surface.
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From page 77... ...
that covered the fresh lava flows. We commonly saw these clams wedged down inside a small fissure cutting across the volcanic terrain, parallel to the rift valley axis.
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From page 78... ...
While it had been fitting for Woods Hole to play the lead role in Project FAMOUS since the program was conducted in the Atlantic Ocean and involved the use of its submersible Alvin, Woods Hole was not the logical choice for the East Pacific Rise program. The Pacific Ocean was the territory of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
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From page 79... ...
The American phase of the joint U.S.-French investigation of the East Pacific Rise took place in late 1979. At the time, we were just beginning to understand how narrowly confined the central volcanic axis of the Mid-Ocean Ridge truly was, given the significant lateral dimensions of the crustal plates it was creating.
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From page 80... ...
Towed vehicles had been used for several years to conduct regional mapping programs but it wasn't until 1977 to 1979 that joint operations between towed vehicles and manned submersibles became so closely choreographed. What made this possible was the speed at which the photographic runs conducted by Angus were processed.
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From page 81... ...
Just as the theory of plate tectonics had mobilized the Earth sciences in the early 1960s, the discovery of hydrothermal vents in the Galapagos Rift and East Pacific Rise mobilized the field of oceanography. All of a sudden, a large number of marine scientists who had never been in manned submersibles or been interested in the spreading axis of the Mid-Ocean Ridge were submitting proposals to their various funding agencies to investigate deep-sea vents.
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From page 82... ...
In January 1982, we had another chance to test this model when Jean brought the submersible Cyana aboard the N/O Le Suroit to dive at 13°N on the East Pacific Rise, a site surveyed in 1980 by the Charcot. Once more, the model proved to be an excellent prediction for finding active hydrothermal vents.
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From page 83... ...
ALVIN BECOMES A ROUTINE TOOL IN MARINE RESEARCH Following the excitement of the later 1970s and early 1980s, Alvin's annual diving program pushed north from the East Pacific Rise off Mexico to include regular visits to the Juan de Fuca, an isolated segment of the Mid-Ocean Ridge, connected millions of years ago to the East Pacific Rise. Dives in the Juan de Fuca and Gorda Ridges off the coasts of Oregon and Washington in 1984 resulted in the discovery of hydrothermal vents and high-temperature black smokers.
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From page 84... ...
After years of development and use, the unmanned remotely operated vehicle program at Woods Hole was finally integrated into the Alvin operational schedule with the arnval of its new support ship Atlantis. It is now up to the deep submergence user community to determine the long-term viability of manned submersibles such as Alvin.
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