50 Years of Ocean Science: The R/V Endeavor Retires

A legendary research ship’s final sail. For nearly 50 years, the R/V Endeavor served as a floating laboratory for ocean science—supporting 700+ expeditions, training generations of students, and enabling research from CTD/rosette water sampling to seafloor mapping, deep-sea coring, and long-term climate and ecosystem monitoring. In this episode, the ship’s operations manager Brendan Thornton and longtime captain Chris Arminetti take listeners behind the scenes of life aboard a UNOLS research vessel: the tight-knit 12-person crew, the evolution from “go dark at sea” to Zoom offshore, and what it felt like to retire a ship with a million+ miles in her wake. Plus: what comes next for the fleet and ocean stewardship.

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Special thanks to the Monterey Bay Aquarium for sponsoring this episode.

Episode Guests: Brendan Thorton and Chris Armanetti

Learn more about the R/V Endeavor Here: 

Meet the next chapter: the Narragansett Dawn

Discover the University of Rhode Island’s Oceanographic Research here

Episode Transcript  and more information on the Pine Forest Media website

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Hosted, produced, and edited by Clark Marchese 

Cover art by Jomiro Eming

Theme music by Nela Ruiz

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