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Decked Out in Yellow

R/V Neil Armstrong‘s deck was awash in yellow on a recent cruise to the tempestuous Irminger Sea off Greenland. Bosun Kyle Covert (top left), WHOI Research Specialist Dan Torres (top right), and Engineering Assistant Andrew Davies (bottom right) prepare moorings for a two-years deployment. These OSNAP moorings measure water temperature, salinity, and currents. The large spheres are subsurface floats that support mooring lines and instruments in deep water. The small spheres are flotation for “tripods”—instrumented bases that sit on the ocean bottom until scientists signal them to drop their weights and surface, to be recovered along with their data.(Photo by Jim Ryder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)