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Readying Jason

While steaming south from San Diego in August 2011, engineers prepared the remotely operated vehicle Jason to study biology and geology at a 3,600-foot volcano on the East Pacific Rise that last erupted in April 2011. Scientists equipped the vehicle with sensitive instruments that measure changes in Earth’s crust. They also collected samples of tube worms and made sonar surveys around the volcano and along the undersea mountain ridge and retrieved recorders that have been measuring pressure on the seafloor at the site for several years and brought them back to the research vesselAtlantis.(Photo by Tom Lanagan, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)