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All Eyes

Miriam Sollich, a graduate student at the Center for Marine Environmental Sciences in Bremen, Germany, keeps a close eye on the pressure of a nitrogen tank as she prepares an isobaric gas-tight sampler (IGT) for deployment at a hydrothermal vent on the East Pacific Rise. IGTs were developed at WHOI to collect samples of hydrothermal fluid and hold it at the same pressure it was under at the seafloor while bringing it back to the ship for analysis. An IGT was also used to obtain the best sample of material gushing from the broken Macondo wellhead during the Deepwater Horizon disaster of 2010.(Photo by David Levin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)