From temperature data gathered from the deep ocean on the German Meteor expedition (1925-1927) Georg Wüst already suspected that there should be a passage through the Mid-Atlantic Ridge around latitude 9 North. The Vema Fracture Zone was then discovered in 1956 by G.R. Hamilton on board , with additional surveying taking place in the years 1959-1960. In the 1960s research was done by , , RV Chain, RV Argo and . The fault was subsequently explored by the French research vessel Jean Charcot in 1977 using its SeaBeam Classic multibeam echosounder, the French submersible Nautile and its mothership RV Nadir in 1989, the US in 1993, and the Russian RV Akademik Nikolay Strakhov in 1998, making it one of the world's best surveyed seafloor features.