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New England Mud Time

WHOI Research Associate Bruce Keafer digs into a pile of muddy sediment from the bottom of the Gulf of Maine. Keafer and colleagues worked in that North Atlantic basin in November 2006 to detect the amount of cysts that were left behind by the harmful algae Alexandrium fundyense at the end of the growing season. Those cysts lie dormant on the seafloor, seeding the sediments for future growing seasons, which usually begin in the first week of April. (Photo by Patrick Rowe, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)