Technical report, ARPA Program final report : 1 February 1971-31 December 1975

Abstract

A program in Advanced Marine Technology was carried out at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, under ARPA sponsorship from February 1971 until December 1975. The program consisted of thirteen projects with a total funding of $1,993,000. Most of the projects improved in surveying, sampling, and measuring capabilities of deep submersibles using ALVIN as the test vehicle. The capabilities required to evaluate an area of the ocean bottom for deployment of large pieces of equipment or arrays included precise three dimensional navigation (page 12), photography (page 15), acoustic mapping (page 15), sampling of materials (page 12, 14), and magnetic and gravity field measurements (page 13). In addition to the submersible oriented projects there were projects on Handling and Transfer at Sea (page 11), Deep Sea Biological Equipment (page 13), and offshore Industrial Waste Monitoring (page 14). Submerged navigation, a Modular Acoustic Suite for ALVIN, and ALVIN operation expenses each accounted for about 20% of the total budget. Section II points out the relevance of the thirteen projects to future military requirements and the technical problems of each. Section III describes the history of the program and its relation to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, and lists the project leaders. Section IV of this report gives a brief description of the results of each project, and in Section VII there is a listing of publications that have resulted from the program as well as a table of pertinent information about the diving schedule of ALVIN.