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Sledding for sediments

George Hampson, left, and Steve Page carefully extract collected sediment from the deep-sea epibenthic sled.  The sled, developed in the mid-1960s, was towed horizontally to collect the uppermost part of seafloor sediment, yielding a new view of populations living there. Instead of being desertlike, the researchers found the seafloor rich in invertebrate fauna, “comparable to that of the shallow-water tropics. Circa 1965. (Photo by Peter Wiebe, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)