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A Stream in the Ocean

WHOI scientists are often spotted around Cape Cod leading teams of students on class fieldtrips. Sometimes common features on land can even fill in as simplified examples of larger, more inaccessible phenomena that occur underwater and far from shore. Here, WHOI senior scientist Larry Pratt used water flowing through a culvert to describe to a group of MIT-WHOI Joint Program students the “waterfalls” and other currents that form in the deep ocean when denser water (often because it is colder or saltier than surrounding water) flows over seafloor terraine. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)