The lower Mississippi River around New Orleans is a busy place. Football field-sized tanker ships like the Tampico slip by, ferrying oil to refineries upstream. The hulking gray naval vessel Cape Knox is docked alongside the upper ninth ward, presiding over ornate wooden homes with wrought iron flourishes. Tugboats like the Jennifer sputter noisily, scurrying off to the next errand. Add to that the cruise ships and throwback paddlewheel boats lined up along bead-strewn Bourbon Street, and you’re looking at one of the country’s most heavily trafficked waterways.
But one ship stands apart – visibly, culturally, functionally – its sea foam green tower rising above a blue outer hull. This, of course, is the Research Vessel Atlantis, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s 273-foot-long scientific powerhouse. And parked on the back deck in a purpose-built hangar is some very special cargo, more valuable than the Tampico’s black gold, more rare than anything on the Cape Knox, more versatile than the Jennifer. It’s the reason our team of 21 scientists is here, loading crates and suitcases onboard: the deep sea submersible Alvin is back, ready for action.
Alvin, built in the early 1960s, is probably the most well traveled scientific submersible on the planet. Or was. Well, is, sort of. The grammatical uncertainty comes from the partial reconstruction of the vessel that has taken place over the last three years. On the back deck of Atlantis, on the eve of Alvin’s research-oriented re-debut, Susan Humphris breaks it down. While the most visible elements of the vehicle – the titanium sphere, the supporting syntactic foam on the back end, the lights and cameras – are all new, some integral parts remain, including the robotic arms, the batteries, and most of the propulsion system. The electronic guts have also been enhanced, with new electrical components and command and control software.
The debate over the degree of Alvin’s newness also comes up when keeping track of dive numbers: do we start over, or continue where we left off? “My feeling is that it’s the same vehicle,” says Humphris, who, as the Principal Investigator of the science side of the rebuilding project, knows as much about the vehicle’s abilities as anyone. “If you start again at number one, you’ll have two first dives, and that’s going to get out of hand rather quickly.” So tomorrow’s dive will be AD 4679, for those of you keeping score at home.
Most importantly, of course, is that the vehicle is functionally new. It has more and better cameras, larger viewports, higher sample capacity, and more nimble electronics. At least, it has all of these things on paper. It’s our job aboard the Science Verification Cruise to see how well these grand visions transfer from blueprints to some of the most extreme environments on our planet: the depths of the oceans. We’ll be putting Alvin through its paces to confirm that it’s everything the scientific community has anticipated. Soon enough, we all hope, Alvin will be restored to its rightful place at the front lines of scientific exploration, new sphere, old thrusters and all.
Given her relentless work and effective management of what turned out to be an obstacle-laden project, (“it’s taken longer than we expected,” she notes, “but here we are!”) Humphris has earned her seat on tomorrow morning’s dive. She will be joined by two Alvin pilots; there’s been a lot of turnover in the pilot corps since 2010, and the new recruits are eager to kick the proverbial tires.
In the mid-afternoon, the New Orleans Port’s pilot, who had guided us through the busiest parts of the Mississippi channel, leapt off the deck and onto a port authority boat amid a spray of churning water. As the afternoon wore on, Atlantis pushed onward to the first dive site, water shifting from muddy river brown to the deep blue of the Gulf of Mexico.
