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Karen Von Damm standing on top of DSV Alvin.

Karen Von Damm standing on top of DSV Alvin.
Karen Von Damm standing on top of DSV Alvin.
Karen Von Damm standing on top of DSV Alvin.
Karen Von Damm standing on top of DSV Alvin.
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197456
Fornari, Daniel
Karen Von Damm standing on top of DSV Alvin.
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06/29/2006
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Caption from Oceanus magazine, Vol. 49, No. 1, page 27:
In 2009, scientists searched for the first time for hydrothermal vents and deep-sea life surrounding them in the Mid-Cayman Spreading Center, in the middle of the Cayman Trough, south of Cuba. At the boundaries of two of Earth's tectonic plates, the spreading center is 5,000 to 6,500 meters (3 to 4 miles) deep and spreading apart at an ultraslow rate (less than 2.5 centimeters or 1 inch per year). They discovered two new vent sites. One was named after the undersea explorer Jacques Piccard and the other after Karen Von Damm, an early pioneer studying the chemistry of fluids from hydrothermal vents. Von Damm (below) was an MIT/WHOI Joint Program graduate student in the early 1980s and a mentor to this article's author, Jill McDermott. Von Damm died in 2008.
Image Of the Day caption:
Former University of New Hampshire professor Karen Von Damm (shown here after an Alvin dive) graduated from the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in 1984, a time when few women chose ocean science as a career path. She in turn made a conscious effort to mentor young women and instill in them the scientific rigor and broad base of knowledge and skills that made her such an exceptional scientist. "If she used an instrument, she had to know how it worked, and how to fix it." current Joint Program student Jill McDermott remembered of her former advisor. Von Damm passed away in 2008, but her legacy lives on in the success of her mentees.
Photo by Dan Fornari
© Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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