[Congressional Record Volume 160, Number 133 (Wednesday, September 17, 2014)]
[Senate]
[Page S5693]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




         50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEEP SUBMERGENCE VEHICLE ALVIN

 Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I want to congratulate the Woods 
Hole Oceanographic Institution, WHOI, on the 50th anniversary of the 
commissioning of the deep-sea, human-occupied submersible Alvin.
  Alvin was commissioned on June 5, 1964, at the Woods Hole 
Oceanographic Institution, in Woods Hole, MA. It is owned by the U.S. 
Navy and operated by WHOI. In one of its first missions, it responded 
to a national emergency in 1966, locating and helping to recover a 
hydrogen bomb that had accidentally dropped into the Mediterranean Sea.
  In 1974, Alvin brought scientists for the first time to the mid-ocean 
ridge during Project FAMOUS, the French-American Mid-Ocean Undersea 
Study, and revealed a seafloor that scientists had not imagined. 
Project FAMOUS proved that submersibles could effectively explore the 
deep seafloor and marked the beginning a new era of exploration.
  Alvin discovered and explored previously unknown and unexpected 
communities of deep-sea organisms that thrive in the absence of 
sunlight, sustained not by photosynthesis but by chemosynthesis. This 
discovery was one of the most profound of the 20th century, because it 
completely transformed our conceptions of where and how life can exist 
on this planet; reconfigured our search today for life on other 
planetary bodies; and opened entirely new lines of microbiological and 
biogeochemical research, including those that have led to commercial 
and pharmaceutical applications.
  Over the following decades, Alvin discovered several previously 
unknown seafloor environments harboring a diversity of chemosynthetic 
communities, including high-temperature black-smoker chimneys that spew 
like undersea geysers in the Pacific, 1979; cold-seep habitats 
sustained by hydrogen sulfide, methane, and other hydrocarbon-rich 
fluids seeping from the seafloor Guaymas Basin, Gulf of California, 
1982, and in the Gulf of Mexico, 1983; and ``Lost City'' environments, 
where seawater reacts with mantle rock, peridotite, to produce methane 
and hydrogen in the Atlantic, 2000.
  Alvin has also explored another type of seafloor habitat--seamounts, 
or ancient undersea volcanoes--with their diverse communities of deep-
sea corals, fish, and other organisms, in the Gulf of Alaska, the 
Pacific, and the Atlantic. Scientists aboard Alvin have discovered many 
hundreds of previously unknown marine species.
  Alvin has contributed to other events of historical significance, 
exploring and bringing back images of the wreck of the Titanic in 1986 
and responding to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, by investigating 
impacts to deep-sea habitats in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.
  Alvin inspired scientists and engineers to develop new generations of 
deep-submergence technology; including remotely operated vehicles, 
ROVs, tethered by fiber-optic cables and free-swimming autonomous 
underwater vehicles, AUVs. These vehicles are now routinely used for 
naval activities and national security, oil exploration, maritime, and 
other industries, environmental and fisheries monitoring, and disaster 
response, and are now being developed for use under ice in polar 
regions and to explore other planetary bodies.
  Alvin resumed operations in 2014 after a major upgrade, funded by the 
National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, and WHOI, which 
dramatically enhanced its capabilities. An anticipated second phase of 
this Alvin upgrade will increase the submersible's diving capacity from 
4,500 to 6,500 meters, 14,000 to 21,000 feet, allowing it to reach 98 
percent of the seafloor.
  Alvin has been a workhorse for U.S. scientists, safely taking nearly 
2,600 individual researchers on more than 4,700 dives to the ocean 
depths and is the only deep-sea human-occupied vehicle in the National 
Deep Submergence Facility for the U.S. oceanographic community. Alvin 
has thrilled and inspired generations of schoolchildren around the 
world with its adventures and discoveries and become an icon for 
exploration and a symbol of American ingenuity.
  The accomplishments and discoveries achieved by this single 
submersible and the scientists, engineers and ship's crew who built, 
use, and operate it during its first 50 years demonstrate the 
importance of continued support for the development of deep-submergence 
technology and exploration of the largest portion of Earth's surface 
and its last frontier the ocean.
  Alvin is a national scientific treasure and we are proud that it 
calls Massachusetts and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 
home.

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