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Lulu

December 26, 2011

Though small, slow, and described by one author as looking a bit like a floating junkyard, Lulu secured a spot in WHOI history as the original support vessel for the deep-sea submersible Alvin. The 105-foot catamaran was constructed by a Woods Hole contractor using surplus Navy mine-sweeping pontoons that stabilized the vessel when Alvin was launched and recovered. Before Atlantis II replaced Lulu as Alvin‘s support ship, the vessel made 119 cruises in the North Atlantic Ocean, including the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Azores area, the Caribbean Sea, and in the eastern Pacific. More photos of WHOI vessels, past and present, are featured in the 2012 WHOI wall calendar. (Photo courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)