Images

George Tate (right, in light baseball cap) drives a raft on the Colorado River in Grand Canyon, 1992. The crane near the bow was used to deploy a small tripod holding a rotating sidescan sonar, which sat on the riverbed recording the motion of underwater sand dunes.

Extensive coral reefs are found in the waters of the United States and its territories. In the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of America, and the Caribbean Sea these include reefs off Florida, Texas, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

An automobile lies crushed under the third story of this apartment building in the Marina District. The ground levels are no longer visible because of structural failure and sinking due to liquefaction.

Large-scale poster describing USGS work.

The USGS, in cooperation with the UK Institute of Oceanographic Sciences (IOS) and others, took images of the seafloor 200 miles around the Hawaiian Islands using GLORIA. GLORIA is a long-range sonar that gives a bird’s-eye view of the seafloor.

Sea Beam bathymetric map of southern Escanaba Trough study area. Contour interval is 10m and is noted by color change. Locations of single- channel water-gun reflection profiles 4 to 12, cruise L1-86-NC, are shown.

Photo shows the side of an actively venting massive sulfide chimney colonized by tube worms and palm worms.

Sea Beam bathymetric map of Escanaba Trough from 1985. A, Northern half. B, Southern half. Contour interval is 50 m; each color change represents 100 m. Yellow indicates areas of no data.

Photo shows tube worms and anemones colonizing massive sulfide talus where diffuse hydrothermal venting is occurring.

Older, oxidized sulfide deposit colonized by sponges at SESCA site, southern half of Escanaba Trough.

Sulfide mound and talus at NESCA site, northern half of Escanaba Trough. Rectangular marker at center of photograph is 15 by 30 cm.

Dynaphot photomicrographs of foraminifers from Escanaba Trough. A-D, Rhabdammina sp.

Photo shows side of sulfide mound showing cluster of tube worms, anemones, and bacterial mats.

Hydrothermal deposits (primarily barite) adjacent to site of active venting. Shiny black material is possibly pyrobitumen.

Glassy, fresh pillow basalt flow at the NESCA site, northern half of Escanaba Trough.

Topographic map of the Cape Flattery region (U.S. Geological Survey Cape Flattery Quadrangle, 15-min series).

George Tate playfully brandishes a grappling hook in a boat in Cook Inlet, Alaska, 1978. The driver (not shown) and George are about to motor away from the research vessel Sea Sounder to drag for the large tripod dubbed the Geoprobe. The apparatus had not deployed its recovery float and line, so the scientists had to try to hook it up off the seafloor.

Three pioneers of USGS geological studies, in 1965, from left to right: Parke D. Snavely, Jr., Robert E. Wallace, and Thomas W. Dibblee, in front of a 1964 Cessna 182G Skylane.

Photograph taken in 1964 of the main part of the Chenega village site in Alaska. Pilings in the ground mark the former locations of homes swept away by tsunami waves. The schoolhouse on high ground was undamaged.

Aftermath of the 1960 Chilean tsunami in Hilo, Hawaii, where the tsunami caused 61 deaths.

Front of the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. building in 1955, now home to the USGS Pacific Coastal and Marine Science Center.

In 1932, the U.S. Coast Guard commissioned the construction of a 165-foot, 1,500-horsepower ship in Bay City, Michigan. This was the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter (USCGC) Escanaba.