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Trapped Under the Ice

In 2007, John Kemp was lowered in a metal basket from the icebreaker Oden to try to retrieve an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Puma visible just beneath Kemp’s long metal pole. Kemp, who heads WHOI’s Mooring Operations and Engineering Group, pushed aside ice floes with the pole to free the vehicle, hook it, and bring it back on board. During the expedition, scientists pioneered the use of AUVs in polar waters as they searched for hydrothermal vents and associated deep-sea life forms on the Arctic Ocean seafloor. (Photo by Chris Linder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)