Image

Deep Garden

The research vessel Atlantis and human-occupied submersible Alvin were in the far north in July 2002 on a cruise supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The mission was to visit six unexplored seamounts in the Gulf of Alaska and survey the deep-sea organisms living on them. Researchers dove in Alvin to Chirikof Seamount, about 1,400 meters below the surface, and captured this image of a pastel garden of deep-sea corals and other animal life on the basalt surface of the seafloor. (Photo courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)