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Sun and snow in the “Twilight Zone”

Sunset on the RV Atlantic Explorer during a research cruise in September 2009 in the Sargasso Sea as part of the Twilight Zone Explorer research project led by Ken Buesseler.  This NSF research project’s primary goal is to develop new tools to measure the flux of marine snow, a term used to describe slowly settling biogenic particles in the ocean. These particles are enriched in organic carbon and hence important in the current debate regarding the ocean’s role in the global carbon cycle and climate.

(Photo by Ken Buesseler, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)