A correction, and how a NASA space shuttle is related to the Peabody Museum

Eric Lazo-Wasem, the collection manager of Invertebrate Zoology here at the Peabody, just informed me that the picture I posted in my flying fish post on May 12, 2010 of the R/V Atlantis was a picture of the new R/V Atlantis, which was launched in 1996, not the old R/V Atlantis, which sailed the seas from 1931 to 1964.

So the flying fish that jumped aboard the R/V Atlantis in 1937 still flew pretty high to get on deck, just not THAT high. (Click here for the flying fish post, now corrected).

Here's the new R/V Atlantis:














Here's the old R/V Atlantis:
















A good portion of the fish specimens in our collection were collected by the old R/V Atlantis. It was the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's first research vessel and apparently it was the first ship ever built "specifically for interdisciplinary research in marine biology, marine geology and physical oceanography". It made 299 cruises, sailing for more than 700,000 miles. For more about it, click here.

The new R/V Atlantis was named for the original vessel, as was the NASA space shuttle Atlantis. The new R/V Atlantis is the host of the Alvin, the world's oldest human occupied submersible, and according to the Woods Hole website, one of the most sophisticated research vessels afloat. For more, click here.

I'll close this post with pics of the shuttle Atlantis and Alvin, taken from Wikipedia and the Woods Hole website, respectively: