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It Was Clean When We Put It In

Engineering assistant Daniel Bogorff works to clean a fouled (and furry-looking) Ultramoor Data Capsule Magazine that had just been recovered from its mooring station on Line W between Woods Hole and Bermuda. Moored instruments, buoys, and rigging attract a wide variety of organisms, including algae, bryozoans, and mussels, and are sometimes damaged or disabled by the hangers-on. Usually, a wipe-down by hand and a freshwater rinse get the equipment clean, but on occasion the organisms hold on so tightly they have to be scrubbed off. This week WHOI is celebrating the 50^th anniversary of the Buoy Group’s first mooring.(Photo courtesy of John Toole, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)