DATE: September 20, 1995
I send you my heartfelt congratulations on the 3000th dive of ALVIN. Your collective efforts over many years have led to profound bodies of knowledge concerning the characteristics of the deep ocean floor and the processes that create and shape it, deep ocean biology, and the chemistry of deep sea sediments, hydrothermal systems and sea floor lavas. Because of your efforts and dedication to excellence we can continue to study and understand the vast inner space of the Earth into the 21st Century. I have appended a quotation from the book, The Depths of the Sea, by C. Wyville Thomson, published in 1874 which is still appropriate 121 years after its writing. Your work on behalf of deep submergence science makes the abyss accessible.
Every gap in the noble little army of martyrs striving to extend the boundaries of knowledge in the wilds of Australia, on the Zambesi, or towards the North or South Pole, was struggled for by earnest volunteers, and still the great ocean slumbering beneath the moon covered a region apparently as inaccessible to man as the mare serenitatis.
With Best Regards and Congratulations,
Dan Fornari