Oceanographic Tools: R/V Atlantis

RV Atlantis

The Research Vessel Atlantis is operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for the American ocean research community. It is one of the most sophisticated research vessels afloat, equipped with precision navigation, bottom mapping and satellite communications systems.

Atlantis is designed as a general purpose vessel and specifically equipped to support the US National Deep Submergence facility, which includes the crewed submersible Alvin, the remotely operated vehicle Jason and the towed vehicles Argo II and DSL 120.

Atlantis (AGOR-25), delivered to WHOI early in 1997, is one of a new class of US Navy research vessels designed and built by the Trinity Marine Group’s Halter Marine, Inc., of Pascagoula, Mississippi. Two Navy owned sister ships are RV Thomas G. Thompson (AGOR-23) operated by the University of Washington and RV Roger Revelle (AGOR-24) operated by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego. A fourth, nearly identical ship, RV Ron Brown, is ownned and operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

The ship is the namesake of WHOI’s first research vessel, a 142-foot, steel-hulled, ketch-rigged ship that sailed some 600,000 miles for ocean science from 1931 to 1966, and also the 210-foot Atlantis II, which served ocean science over a million-mile, 8,000 day-at sea career that extended from 1963 to 1996.