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A Royal Visit

December 10, 2017

WHOI biologist Bill Schroeder (middle) presented a rare deep-sea fish—called chimaera—to Japan’s Crown Prince Akihito during a visit to WHOI back in 1953 as WHOI Director Admiral Smith (left) looked on. The Prince’s father, the late Emperor Hirohito, was a world-renowned marine biologist who visited the Institution himself in 1975 and toured the R/V Atlantis II and the three-person submersible Alvin during a port call in Tokyo in 1987. Japan recently set April 30, 2019, as the date for Emperor Akihito’s abdication, which will mark the first retirement of a sitting Emperor in 200 years. (Image courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)