Atlantis crew members Patrick Neumann and Allison Heater were the swimmers assisting Alvin’s recovery Friday. They are about to attach safety lines to support Alvin’s payload basket before it is lifted from the water. (Photo by Chris Linder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Alvin Expedition Leader Bruce Strickrott isn't arm wrestling with Alvin’s portside manipulator arm, but rather placing a sampling device into its gripper. (Photo by Chris Linder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Veteran Alvin Pilot Pat Hickey, right, loads weights onto the sub with Jefferson Grau, a pilot-in-training, before Friday's dive in the Gulf of Mexico. (Photo by Chris Linder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Pilot-in-training Jefferson Grau retrieves shoes of Pilot-in-training Chris Lathan and Alvin Pilot Pat Hickey, who dove in the sub Friday. Pilots and passengers leave their shoes behind when they dive to reduce dirt and debris inside the sub’s personnel sphere. (Photo by Chris Linder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

WHOI marine geologist Adam Soule went straight from bed to ball (the nickname for Alvin’s personnel sphere), oversleeping before his dive Friday. (Photo by Chris Linder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Able-bodied Seaman Patrick Neumann swims back up to the small boat dispatched from Atlantis to assist with Alvin’s recovery. (Photo by Chris Linder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Amanda Demopoulos, a biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, shows off deep-sea mussels collected on Friday’s dive to the Florida Escarpment. (Photo by Chris Linder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

WHOI scientist Adam Soule used Atlantis’s multibeam sonar to create this seafloor map of Friday’s dive site on the Florida Escarpment. (Photo by Chris Linder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

On the morning he was scheduled to dive in Alvin, Adam Soule slept soundly. So soundly, in fact, that he slept through his alarm. The Alvin Group and the ship’s crew were just about finished preparing for Friday’s dive when Soule’s roommate aboard the research vessel Atlantis, Jeff Marlow, roused him so he could make his appointment to go to the bottom of the ocean. Read More →