Pacific plates

Stacked plastic plates, called “sandwiches” (left), used as artificial substrates for larvae of vent animals. As part of the research project LADDER (Larval Dispersal on the Deep East Pacific Rise), a team that included WHOI biologists used the Deep Submergence Vehicle Alvin to deploy the sandwiches on the seafloor near a hydrothermal vent site and later recovered them to see how larvae settled and grew on them.
(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)