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Oceanographic Trailblazers

September 4, 2017

Edmond Watson, a long-time researcher at WHOI, works with an electric current meter he helped develop aboard the research vessel Atlantis sometime around 1938. The original Atlantis, built when WHOI was established in 1930, was the first dedicated, open-ocean research ship. It blazed a trail for the burgeoning field of oceanography, in part by giving access to oceanographers to test new instruments they were inventing to make some of the first ocean observations. To Watson’s left is Al Woodcock, a high school dropout who walked in WHOI in 1931 asking for a job. He worked aboard Atlantis for nine years, making observations, and evolved into a world-renowned scientist. (Photo courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)