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One Extreme to Another

A team on R/V Mytilus keeps a watch on an expendable spar (X-spar) buoy during testing in an unseasonable February cold snap. WHOI Ocean and Climate Change Institute director Carol Anne Clayson and senior scientist John Toole conceived of the x-spar buoy as a low-cost, easy-to-assemble platform for instruments that gather climatic and other data from inaccessible or inhospitable locations such as the Southern Ocean. Once perfected and operational, Clayson envisions a fleet of X-spar buoys delivering data in real-time to climate and ocean scientists worldwide, much as Argo floats and Ice-tethered Profilers do now. (Photo by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)