Game-Changing Discovery

In 1977 during dives to the Galapagos Rift in the East Pacific, a team of geologists working aboard R/V Knorr and Lulu, the support ship for the submersible Alvin, see for the first time active hydrothermal vents and the unique animals (such as these tubeworms) that live near them. This Sunday, August 7, during the public event Tour the Knorr, WHOI geologist Susan Humphris will describe the discovery and the ways it changed understanding of life on Earth and geologic processes beneath the ocean floor.
(Photo courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)