Image

Baffled by the Bloom

Scientists and students on board the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy gather around a computer to learn how to to guide a conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) package to the seafloor and back.  During the Arctic Spring Cruise in May of 2014 scientists, including WHOI’s Bob Pickart, carried out 230 deployments of the CTD to gather information on phytoplankton blooms that occur under the sea-ice. Scientists are looking for clues as to how and why these blooms can begin in near-darkness under the ice  before the spring thaw. It was the first-ever broad-scale springtime survey of the Chukchi Sea.(Photo by Amanda Kowalski, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)