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Box of Mud

Senior research assistant Ellen Roosen (white hard hat) puts a pin in a box corer in preparation for deployment over the side of the research vessel Oceanus in June 2008. Researchers collected sediments from the floor of the western North Atlantic in order to collect living benthic foraminifera (amoeba-like microbes) for culturing and studies of shell chemistry and how it is affected by temperature and elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. From foreground to background stand: ship’s bosun Clindor Cacho; Roosen; MIT/WHOI student Fern Gibbons, summer student fellow Zack Bailey; and marine chemist Dan McCorkle (obscured by the corer). (Photo by Alexander Dorsk, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)