Dear Friend:

Cheers to the new year! In 2020, WHOI hopes to push ocean exploration in new and ambitious ways. The newly upgraded Nereid Under Ice (NUI) is a hybrid remotely operated vehicle that will help us do this. Seen above, NUI deploys from the Norwegian icebreaker KronPrins Haakon to conduct its first deep ocean dives to 4,000 meters (over 13,000 feet) along the Gakkel Ridge in the Arctic Ocean. The area is one of the world's slowest spreading and deepest mid-ocean ridges, along which lies the Aurora vent-field and its underwater hot springs. Here is both one of the most hostile and extreme locales for life on Earth, and also our best analog for where life might exist elsewhere in the Universe.