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Back to Atlantis

December 2, 2018

Members of a 1947-48 cruise row back to the R/V Atlantis (visible in the background). The primary purpose of the six-month “Med Cruise” was to prepare bathymetric charts of the Agean seafloor in the event of a Soviet naval threat coming from the Black Sea. At the time, making such maps was done using the relatively new single-beam echo-sounders that measured the distance to a single point beneath an instrument trailed over the side of the ship. Today, the same work is carried out much more efficiently and with much more accuracy using modern multi-beam sonar systems mounted on the bottom of a ship’s hull. (Courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)