Back from the Deep

Researchers George Tupper and Ruth Curry pull in the High Resolution Profiler (HRP) after a mission in the western North Atlantic in 2011. When the HRP is put into the ocean, it measures ocean temperature, salinity, and flow speeds at tiny (microscale) intervals as it descends more than three miles to the ocean floor. Then it jettisons ballast weights and rapidly returns to the surface with its cargo of data. Curry leads a project using the HRP and other instruments to determine how cold, dense waters from the Antarctic circulate and mix over rough seafloor topography near the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. (Photo by Carolina Nobre, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)