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Sunrise In The Arctic

Sunrise comes to Sachs Harbour, a village on Banks Island in the Canadian Arctic that in 2014 was a research hub and equipment center for scientists studying sea ice. WHOI engineers were there on a mission to install a novel under-ice communications system that takes advantage of a sound channel that forms in Arctic waters. The system, designed by engineer Lee Freitag and his colleagues, allowed autonomous vehicles to navigate under the ice and to communicate, without surfacing, to scientists in their home labs. Signals were transmitted to underwater receivers suspended under buoys on sea ice, and then via satellite to shore. (Photo by Peter Koski, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)