Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution history

In 1940 he was named director of Woods Hole and, with wartime funds from the United States Navy, vastly increased the institution’s budget and size.

The US Navy purchased the vessel in April 1941, for $250,000, for use as a patrol gunboat and re-christened it USS Williamsburg.

The vessel was sold in April 1947 and was to be used as a mail boat between New Bedford and Cuttyhunk Island.

Balanus was sold in 1950 to D.L. Edgerton, a MD fisherman.

WHOI’s first support from NSF came in 1952 for work on summer plankton blooms in Long Island bays and for eight training fellowships.

The first formal education program was a summer research experience for undergraduates initiated about 1955.

The vessel was sold in 1958 to S.H. Swift, was renamed Black Swan, and engaged in charter trade.

The National Science Foundation acquired the vessel on 8/9/1962, refitted it for science, and christened it Anton Bruun in memory of the noted Danish marine biologist who chaired the first International Oceanographic Commission.

Bear made acoustic, bathymetric and seismic measurements, and participated in fish observations.The vessel was sold in 1963 to a New Bedford fisherman and refitted as a scalloper.

The vessel began making regular trips with Alvin aboard in May 1965.

In 1966, Atlantis was sold to Argentina, refurbished, and renamed El Austral.

The success of funding led to further expansion, and by 1968 the institute housed over 600 scientists and staff.

In 1970 the vessel was sold to the University of Puerto Rico.

In Robert Ballard…he was assigned to the Woods Hole (Massachusetts) Oceanographic Research Institution, where he became a full-time marine scientist in 1974 after completing doctoral degrees in marine geology and geophysics at the University of Rhode Island.

Among WHOI’s more public accomplishments have been the discovery of hydrothermal vents on the sea floor of the Pacific Ocean in 1977 (new vents continue

Asterias was sold to Ocean Research Engineering in 1980.

In 1983 a deck hanger and A-frame were installed enabling her to handle the launch and recovery of the submersible Alvin.

In September 1984, Lulu was transferred to San Diego for Navy use as tender to the submersibles Sea Cliff and Turtle, but was instead sold to private owners.

In 1985 Edwin Athearn, her former captain saved her from destruction and together with Dave Lewis restored the ship's name and condition.

In 1996 she was delivered to Shaula Navigation, based in Boulder CO for rechristening as Antares and a planned new career as a fisheries research vessel in the North Pacific and Gulf of Alaska.

She made her first call in home port on April 1997.

The growing diversity of oceanographic research was recognized in 2000 by the formation of four “ocean institutes” within WHOI: the Coastal Ocean Institute, Deep Ocean Exploration Institute, Ocean and Climate Change Institute, and Ocean Life Institute.

Tioga, 2004-presentR/V Tioga is an aluminum hulled coastal research vessel that serves ocean scientists and engineers working in the waters off the Northeastern United States and is solely owned by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

In 2006, however, researchers at Woods Hole successfully developed fiber optic cables that were capable of both supporting more instrumentation and that weighed a fraction of the existing cable.

The founding mission of WHOI, which remains the same in 2008, was “research and education to advance understanding of the ocean and its interaction with the Earth system, and communicating this understanding for the benefit of society.”

On 3 April 2011, within a week of resuming of the search operation for Air France Flight 447, a team led by WHOI, operating full ocean depth autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) owned by the Waitt Institute discovered, by means of sidescan sonar, a large portion of debris field from flight AF447.

In March 2017 the institution effected an open-access policy to make its research publicly accessible online.