50th Anniversary of the Deep Submergence Vehicle Alvin

Floor Speech

Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I want to congratulate the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, WHOI, on the 50th anniversary of the commissioning of the deep-sea, human-occupied submersible Alvin.

Alvin was commissioned on June 5, 1964, at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Woods Hole, MA. It is owned by the U.S. Navy and operated by WHOI. In one of its first missions, it responded to a national emergency in 1966, locating and helping to recover a hydrogen bomb that had accidentally dropped into the Mediterranean Sea.

In 1974, Alvin brought scientists for the first time to the mid-ocean ridge during Project FAMOUS, the French-American Mid-Ocean Undersea Study, and revealed a seafloor that scientists had not imagined. Project FAMOUS proved that submersibles could effectively explore the deep seafloor and marked the beginning a new era of exploration.

Alvin discovered and explored previously unknown and unexpected communities of deep-sea organisms that thrive in the absence of sunlight, sustained not by photosynthesis but by chemosynthesis. This discovery was one of the most profound of the 20th century, because it completely transformed our conceptions of where and how life can exist on this planet; reconfigured our search today for life on other planetary bodies; and opened entirely new lines of microbiological and biogeochemical research, including those that have led to commercial and pharmaceutical applications.

Over the following decades, Alvin discovered several previously unknown seafloor environments harboring a diversity of chemosynthetic communities, including high-temperature black-smoker chimneys that spew like undersea geysers in the Pacific, 1979; cold-seep habitats sustained by hydrogen sulfide, methane, and other hydrocarbon-rich fluids seeping from the seafloor Guaymas Basin, Gulf of California, 1982, and in the Gulf of Mexico, 1983; and ``Lost City'' environments, where seawater reacts with mantle rock, peridotite, to produce methane and hydrogen in the Atlantic, 2000.

Alvin has also explored another type of seafloor habitat--seamounts, or ancient undersea volcanoes--with their diverse communities of deep-sea corals, fish, and other organisms, in the Gulf of Alaska, the Pacific, and the Atlantic. Scientists aboard Alvin have discovered many hundreds of previously unknown marine species.

Alvin has contributed to other events of historical significance, exploring and bringing back images of the wreck of the Titanic in 1986 and responding to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, by investigating impacts to deep-sea habitats in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Alvin inspired scientists and engineers to develop new generations of deep-submergence technology; including remotely operated vehicles, ROVs, tethered by fiber-optic cables and free-swimming autonomous underwater vehicles, AUVs. These vehicles are now routinely used for naval activities and national security, oil exploration, maritime, and other industries, environmental and fisheries monitoring, and disaster response, and are now being developed for use under ice in polar regions and to explore other planetary bodies.

Alvin resumed operations in 2014 after a major upgrade, funded by the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, and WHOI, which dramatically enhanced its capabilities. An anticipated second phase of this Alvin upgrade will increase the submersible's diving capacity from 4,500 to 6,500 meters, 14,000 to 21,000 feet, allowing it to reach 98 percent of the seafloor.

Alvin has been a workhorse for U.S. scientists, safely taking nearly 2,600 individual researchers on more than 4,700 dives to the ocean depths and is the only deep-sea human-occupied vehicle in the National Deep Submergence Facility for the U.S. oceanographic community. Alvin has thrilled and inspired generations of schoolchildren around the world with its adventures and discoveries and become an icon for exploration and a symbol of American ingenuity.

The accomplishments and discoveries achieved by this single submersible and the scientists, engineers and ship's crew who built, use, and operate it during its first 50 years demonstrate the importance of continued support for the development of deep-submergence technology and exploration of the largest portion of Earth's surface and its last frontier the ocean.

Alvin is a national scientific treasure and we are proud that it calls Massachusetts and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution home.

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