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Taking the Ball and Going Home

Crew members from the Canadian Coast Guard vessel Pierre Radisson use a Zodiac inflatable boat to recover a mooring from Hudson Strait in northeastern Canada in September 2006. The sub-surface mooring was designed to help WHOI physical oceanographer Fiamma Straneo and colleagues observe the flow of fresh water out of the Strait and into the Labrador Sea. The mooring was set in 200-meter-deep water and stretched to 50 m below the surface so as not to be chopped up by ice floes and bergs. The instrument on top of the yellow float is an upward looking sonar, which allowed Straneo and colleagues to measure sea-ice thickness (or”draft”). Straneo is one of many WHOI researchers examining changes occuring near Earth’s poles. (Photo by Fiammetta Straneo, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)