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Arctic footprints

Bone-chilling temperatures, biting winds, and rapidly changing sea ice conditions make the Chukchi Sea off Point Barrow, Alaska, a particularly difficult place to work. And then there are the curious neighbors — towering polar bears that periodically stop by camp unannounced. These are just a few of the challenges researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) faced in March 2010, while studying the flow of water to the Arctic from the Pacific Ocean. The team used a REMUS (Remote Environmental Monitoring UnitS) 100 vehicle, deisgned and operated by the Oceanographic Systems Lab at WHOI, to gather crucial data from beneath the ice.
(Photo by John Kemp, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)