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The Seafloor Fights Back

While attempting to drive a piston corer into the compacted shelf sediments beneath the Chukchi Sea during a 2002 expedition, ocean researchers found themselves coping with bent and mangled equipment. WHOI postdoctoral investigator Mea Cook (yellow hardhat), Coastal Carolina University coring technician Neal Gielstra (black sweatshirt), and crew members of the Coast Guard Cutter Healy (in red) considered different methods for extracting the PVC coreliner from the metal casing. Later in the day, a vibra-core was deployed instead of the piston core; that gear was bent in the same fashion by the stubborn seafloor sediments and eventually got stuck in the bottom. (Photo by Mary Carman, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)