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Sign of the Zodiac

In March 2008, University of Rhode Island graduate student Pat Kelley (top, middle) and crew members from the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy use a Zodiac to recover a floating sediment trap in the seas off Alaska.  The recovery was a rare moment in open water for a science party—which included WHOI biologists Carin Ashjian and Phil Alatalo—that was examining the Bering Sea ecosystem and how it responds to changing ice. Ashjian and colleagues have been conducting long-term studies of  the dynamics and changes in the populations of plankton in Arctic waters and what that means to whales and native cultures.

(Photo by Carin Ashjian, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)