The Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory (NSMRL) is located on the

New London Submarine Base Naval Submarine Base New London is the primary United States Navy East Coast submarine base, also known as the "Home of the Submarine Force." It is located in Groton, Connecticut directly across the Thames River from its namesake city of New Lo ...

Groton, Connecticut Groton is a town in New London County, Connecticut located on the Thames River. It is the home of General Dynamics Electric Boat, which is the major contractor for submarine work for the United States Navy. The Naval Submarine Base New London is ...

. The laboratory's mission is to protect the health of American sailors, focused on submarines and scuba diving. It is a subordinate command of the Naval Medical Research Center.

History and overview

The laboratory was established during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

to study night vision,

sonar Sonar (sound navigation and ranging or sonic navigation and ranging) is a technique that uses sound propagation (usually underwater, as in submarine navigation) to navigate, measure distances (ranging), communicate with or detect objects on o ...

sound discrimination, and personnel selection. Today it continues in the areas of undersea warfighter health and performance, submarine atmospheric monitoring, bioeffects of underwater sound and blast, submariner psychological fitness, submarine human systems integration, diving and hyberbaric research, submarine survival, escape, and rescue, hearing conservation, and undersea health epidemiology. Its achievements include: * Sea Lab 1 habitat project * Disabled Submarine Escape and Rescue project * "Rig-for-red" viewing * Development of the

International Orange International orange is a color used in the aerospace industry to set objects apart from their surroundings, similar to safety orange, but deeper and with a more reddish tone. Variations of international orange Aerospace The Advanced Cr ...

color (Air-Sea Rescue Red) * Studies of hyperbaric

nitrogen narcosis Narcosis while diving (also known as nitrogen narcosis, inert gas narcosis, raptures of the deep, Martini effect) is a reversible alteration in consciousness that occurs while diving at depth. It is caused by the anesthetic effect of certain g ...

* Development of saturation diving and

decompression tables There are several categories of decompression equipment used to help divers decompress, which is the process required to allow divers to return to the surface safely after spending time underwater at higher ambient pressures. Decompression o ...

* Performance-based screening of

color vision Color vision, a feature of visual perception, is an ability to perceive differences between light composed of different wavelengths (i.e., different spectral power distributions) independently of light intensity. Color perception is a part of ...

* Personnel screening and assessment for enclosed environments * Effects of atmospheric conditions on health and performance in enclosed environments * Underwater acoustic signal discrimination and classification * Bioeffects of underwater sound * Search and rescue NSMRL is located in Groton, Connecticut near the mouth of the

Thames River The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the second-longest in the United Kingdom, after the R ...

and

Long Island Sound Long Island Sound is a marine sound and tidal estuary of the Atlantic Ocean. It lies predominantly between the U.S. state of Connecticut to the north and Long Island in New York to the south. From west to east, the sound stretches from the Eas ...

Facilities

* Two hyperbaric chambers, saturation and

hypobaric A hypobaric chamber, or altitude chamber, is a chamber used during aerospace or high terrestrial altitude research or training to simulate the effects of high altitude on the human body, especially hypoxia (low oxygen) and hypobaria (low ambien ...

capability * 1000 m3

anechoic chamber An anechoic chamber (''an-echoic'' meaning "non-reflective") is a room designed to stop reflections of either sound or electromagnetic waves. They are also often isolated from energy entering from their surroundings. This combination means t ...

* 145 m3 reverberant chamber * Ten sound-proof audio testing booths * Vision and auditory research suites * Technical library * Waterfront access (submarines and diving) * Diving work boat The NSMRL auditory laboratory includes a large, 1,000 m3 anechoic chamber. The suspended cable floor and fiberglass wedges provide an "echo-free" environment that is essential for efforts on spatialized auditory displays and transducer evaluation. Additionally, there are ten instrumented sound-proof booths and a reverberant room. These facilities are integral to the work on human-machine interfaces, combat systems displays, hearing conservation, audio signal enhancement, noise reduction techniques, and diver hearing. The laboratory has a 142 m3 enclosed atmosphere testing environment and facilities for cardiopulmonary and metabolic workload assessment. It also has maintained close collaboration with the Royal Navy and its facilities at Alverstoke, England on several projects. NSMRL's diving research program is supported by a saturation diving chamber certified to pressures simulating 350 fsw and a fully instrumented hyperbaric treatment chamber. Both chambers are capable of supporting multi-diver teams and associated medical, physiological, and exercise equipment. The laboratory also maintains an enclosed 25-foot

Boston Whaler Boston Whaler is an American boat manufacturer. It is a subsidiary of the Brunswick Boat Group, a division of the Brunswick Corporation. Boston Whalers were originally produced in Massachusetts, hence the name, but today are manufactured in Edg ...

equipped with GPS and radar to support open water diving research.

Library

Many of the NSMRL publications have been scanned and are available online at the Rubicon Research Repository. Other articles can be found in the DUMC

Archive An archive is an accumulation of historical records or materials – in any medium – or the physical facility in which they are located. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual ...

finding aid A finding aid, in the context of archival science, is an organization tool, a document containing detailed, indexed, and processed metadata and other information about a specific collection of records within an archive. Finding aids often consist o ...

s of the

Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society The underwater environment is the region below the surface of, and immersed in, liquid water in a natural or artificial feature (called a body of water), such as an ocean, sea, lake, pond, reservoir, river, canal, or aquifer. Some charac ...

library collection.

History and overview

Facilities

Library

See also

References

Other external links