Volcanic scenes fill the opening seconds of “Boundary of Creation” and we’re told “these are the processes shaping our earth.” So begins a tale of Project FAMOUS (French-American Mid Ocean Undersea Study), in which scientists studied the ocean floor. New York Times science reporter Walter Sullivan serves as the film’s host, and he explains the project. A map gives us an overview of the Atlantic Ocean and its bordering continents as Sullivan explains the various plates existing beneath the surface (mark 02:02). Understanding changes along plates boundaries is identified as the purpose of Project FAMOUS, and the film shows us the US Navy’s tiny submersible Alvin (mark 03:04) operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. (Scientists from Woods Hole and CNEXO — the French National Center of Ocean Exploitation — were in charge of the project. The exploration was aided by French deep-diving submersibles Archimède and Cyana). We visit Iceland at mark 03:30, the product of millions of years of plate tectonics. Such development still occurs, evident by the island of Surtsey — a volcano island off Iceland’s coast that was only reached the surface in 1963 (mark 04:00) — volcanic damage caused to the island of Heimaey in 1973. We come to the Azores at mark 07:00 — an archipelago composed of nine volcanic islands in the North Atlantic Ocean — where marine geologists plan to explore a rift on the ocean floor. After detailed explanation of the planned mission by American and French scientists (including Robert Ballard, who went on to discover the wreckage of the Titanic in 1985), the film quickly visits Hawaii (mark 12:33) which is another hotbed of volcanic activity. Submersible crews receive additional training are shown diving to visit an underwater lava flow before the film once again returns to the Azores dive site (mark 14:35). Alvin and its three-man crew heads 9,000 feet to the ocean floor starting at mark 18:00 while scientists keep careful watch on the water’s surface. We hear radio transmissions as a camera captures scenes from beneath the waves and illustrations (mark 19:33) explain the tracking, navigation, and communication system of the mission. With Alvin back on the surface at mark 20:50, the scientists review footage and samples gathered and explain how it is a tremendous tool in understand the wonders beneath the waves.
More about this: Two years after humans landed on the moon, the time had come to try to send humans to the seafloor. In 1971, Xavier Le Pichon, head of the French Centre National pour l’Exploitation des Oceans (CNEXO) wrote a letter to Woods Hole geologist Ken Emery and proposed a joint U.S.-French expedition to explore the mid-ocean ridge with human-occupied submersibles.
Few research submersibles existed at the time. The French had the 200-ton bathyscaphe Archimède and were building a smaller “diving saucer” called Cyana. The U.S. had the Navy-owned, 15-ton Alvin, developed by engineers at Woods Hole. Alvin was only seven years old and still being tested to see what it could do.
Robert Ballard, Emery’s protege, replied enthusiastically to the idea for a joint French-American expedition to explore the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. But it needed support and funding from U.S. earth scientists.
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