Image

Makeshift Lab

During a trip to Dongsha Atoll south of Taiwan in the South China Sea last year, researchers from Anne Cohen’s lab fashioned a floating lab out of wooden planks and plastic tubes. The region experiences the world’s largest internal waves—waves that form within the ocean along the boundaries between water layers with different densities. As these waves shoal up the atoll, they bring cool, nutrient-rich, low-pH seawater to the reefs. The researchers used their custom-made lab to deploy instruments on the reefs so they could study how the waves affect the health of corals in the area.(Photo by Kathryn Pietro, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)