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Rick Sanger (#44) and Nick O’Sadcia (#45) are the newest Alvin pilots, making them qualified to pilot the sub on science expeditions in the deep sea. Rick Sanger is one of Alvin’s newest Navy-certified pilots. Photo by the Alvin Team, © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Rick Sanger is a research engineer at WHOI and has…

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Roxanne Beinart, photo by Alex Deciccio. Roxanne Beinart is a professor of biological oceanography at the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography. She’s been using NDSF vehicles since early in graduate school and is a member of the Deep Submergence Science Committee (DeSSC). We sat down with Beinart to hear about how all…

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Aerial view of R/V Atlantis and R/V Neil Armstrong at sea together. Photo by Kent Sheasley © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Aerial view of R/V Atlantis and R/V Neil Armstrong at sea together. Photo by Kent Sheasley © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Both R/V Neil Armstrong and R/V Atlantis will have expanded bandwidth at sea for the rest of 2023. The faster upload and download speeds are part of a fleetwide trial, funded by the Office…

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Science at sea—part two In the spirit of adjustment, I asked scientists on the expedition how their goals and approaches have evolved since we’ve been underway. Here is a sampler of what they said: Isaac Keohane (University of South Carolina) brought two computers and an external hard drive on the expedition for redundancy. As luck…

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The successful recovery of Medea after a ship-wide power outage. Jason, which can be seen floating at the end of the tether cable, was recovered shortly after. Photo by Zachary Clayton.

While power outages aren’t excessively common on research cruises, this event does encapsulate the nature of conducting science at sea: anything that can go wrong might go wrong at any given moment and—as happened today—without any prior warning. Chief Scientist Chris German’s mantra is to treat every day at sea like it may be your last day for conducting science, which is why he always has a plan B (and a plan C, D, E, and F if it comes to it).

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The human-occupied submersible Alvin is ready to return to scientific research at its newly certified maximum depth of 6500 meters (4 miles). That’s the conclusion of a team of scientists who have spent the past three weeks taking the iconic sub through its paces at locations at the Puerto Rico Trench and Mid-Cayman Rise, testing its scientific…

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