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Jian Zhao from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) takes water samples from a CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) rosette on board the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer during a 2015 expedition off…

A scientific instrument called a CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) is pulled up to the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer from deep in the Atlantic Ocean. The 2015 expedition led by…

The world ocean circulates like a conveyor belt, with cold, salty, dense water in the North Atlantic sinking beneath the surface. But one question remains a mystery: How do these…

MIT-WHOI Joint Program graduate student Laura Stevens marks the location of a buried geophone in Botswana along the East African Rift, where two pieces of Earth’s crust are separating, forming…

R/V Knorr Bosun Peter Liarikos and Shipboard Scientific Services Group technician Amy Simoneau release a catch of rock specimens collected with a dredge near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Scientists on the…

A bucket of ice-cold water is the traditional greeting for people returning from their first dive in the submersible Alvin. Here, WHOI data manager Scott McCue is ritually doused aboard…

Scientists have long thought that new ocean crust was only formed at spreading centers, where tectonic plates separate and allow magma to emerge from below. WHOI geophysicist Dan Lizarralde recently…

Data from a Nortek DW Aquadopp current monitor is downloaded and analyzed after the instrument spent two years in the Atlantic Ocean south of Greenland, where important subsurface currents cross…

In 1948, a crowd gathered as the original research vessel Atlantis set sail from Cape Cod for a journey to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, part of a long chain of mountains…

Crew aboard the R/V Atlantis recover an ocean bottom seismometer (OBS) during a January 2009 expedition. The sensitive instruments are deployed on the seafloor to record ground movements from undersea…

WHOI geologist and earthquake expert Jian Lin arrived on New Zealand’s South Island two days after the deadly 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck that region on Feb. 22. Lin traveled to…

In April 2010, the deep submersible Alvin (shown here with its support ship, R/V Atlantis in the background) carried out a month-long expedition to to the Galapagos Spreading Center in…

The R/V Atlantis works off the coast of Easter Island (Rapa Nui) in the southeastern Pacific Ocean during a 1998 research expedition. During the cruise, researchers used the submersible Alvin…

The Human Occupied Vehicle Alvin and the R/V Atlantis work in the waters off Galapagos Islands in April 2010 during the Galapagos Ridge Undersea Volcanic Eruptions Expedition (GRUVEE). A team…

Atlantis—the first Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution research vessel—departs the dock in July of 1947. This early cruise to Bikini Atoll yielded sediment cores from Henry Stetson’s coring device, echosounder profiles…

The French submersible Cyana is launched into the North Atlantic in 1974 as part of the French-American Mid-Ocean Undersea Study (Project FAMOUS). The submersible—together with the WHOI-operated Alvin and the…