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Blue Hawaii

From a small boat, MIT-WHOI Joint Program student Max Kaplan stretches out to retrieve a drifter buoy from waters off Hawaii. In May 2013 Kaplan and WHOI biologist Aran Mooney used buoys equipped with digital acoustic monitors—the DMON, developed at WHOI—to study dolphins and small whales. The researchers released DMON-equipped buoys to drift with groups of animals, recording their sounds when no boats are around to disturb them. Analyzing the recordings will help them better understand how the animals use sound under normal conditions.(Photo by T. Aran Mooney, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)