“Turtle”, Bathysphere (DSV-3), 1968
Hahn and Clay Co., Houston, Texas

This is the spherical pressure hull for the bathysphere “Turtle”, one of three used in the ALVIN submersible program, the first program to use manned underwater exploration vessels. .A crew of two—a pilot and an observer—first took Turtle to a depth of 10,000 feet in 1980. The vessel was later used for deep-sea salvage work off Hawaii. In 1990, scientists used experimental sonar on board Turtle to create images of hydrothermal vent plumes off the coast of Baja, California.