No one can say Falmouth Academy doesn’t make good on a promise. Back in 2019, Dr. Adam Soule, Chief Scientist of the National Deep Submergence Facility at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute (WHOI), offered a private tour of the Alvin, the country’s only deep-diving research submersible capable of carrying humans to the seafloor, as a Falmouth Academy Benefit Auction item which was purchased by Jay and Melissa Goldbach (P’21). Unfortunately, the tour had to be postponed due to health and safety concerns during the pandemic. Since then, Dr. Soule assumed a new position at the University of Rhode Island as a Professor of Oceanography and Director of the Ocean Exploration Cooperative Institute and James Goldbach’ 21 graduated from Falmouth Academy and is leaving for the University of Massachusetts, Amherst at the end of August. It looked like this meeting might be chalked up to a casualty of COVID. 

Science Department Chair Liz Klein, who was instrumental in facilitating the initial donation, was determined to see it through. She stayed in regular contact with Soule to find a time when WHOI would welcome visitors to campus and together they moved mountains, or as Klein put it “institutions,” to make it happen.

On August 11, Dr. Soule met the Goldbachs in Woods Hole for a grand tour not only of the Alvin, but a number of different vehicles in the Blake high bay, a quick trip through the visitors center, and lunch at the Woods Hole Market. Dr. Soule shared some of the history and milestones of the Alvin which was first commissioned in 1964 by the U.S. Navy and completed its 5,000th dive on November 25, 2018, during an expedition to the Guaymas Basin in the Gulf of California. 

“It was fun and informative learning so much about Alvin from Adam (Dr. Soule),” said James Goldbach ’21. “Not only did he speak about the amazing discoveries enabled by Alvin but also shared about his own experiences as part of several research dives.” 

Alvin has aided in some high-profile discoveries over the years. Notably, in 1977, it enabled scientists to solve the puzzle of heat flow from the earth’s crust to the ocean floor by discovering hydrothermal vents which also gave scientists their first glimpse at deep-sea organisms which prior, they did not know existed. The vents provided chemical-rich fluids which supported life through chemical synthesis rather than photosynthesis.  Alvin also aided in the recovery of a lost hydrogen bomb, explored the wreck of the RMS Titanic, and examined impacts to deep-sea coral communities following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In 2018, Dr. Soule said, “Alvin revolutionized our understanding of the extremes that life can tolerate and caused us to re-think the origin of life on our planet.”

This year, Alvin is getting ready to dive back in at even deeper depths. Upgrades and recertification efforts are underway to outfit Alvin for a trip to the Puerto Rico trench in October, enabling the sub to dive to 6500 meters (over 20,000 feet). WHOI Associate Professor of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry Dr. Frieder Klein, spouse of Liz Klein, will travel aboard Atlantis, the ship that carries Alvin, as part of the research team. 

And although Soule is no longer working in Falmouth, he will remain a member of the community as a new Falmouth Academy parent of a seventh-grader along with his spouse, Dr. Melissa Soule a Research Scientist in Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.