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Trapped

Senior research engineer Scott Worrilow (foreground) and boatswain Patrick Hennessy recover a sediment trap from the Pacific Ocean and return it to the deck of the research vessel Atlantis in November 2006. The trap one of the many tools used by biologist Lauren Mullineaux and colleagues in the interdisciplinary Larval Dispersal along the Deep East Pacific Rise (LADDER) program allows researchers to observe what type of animal larvae settle into ocean bottom waters. The biologists are trying to understand the different environmental conditions that lead different organisms to colonize different parts of the deep-ocean hydrothermal vent system. (Photo by Irene Garcia Berdeal, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)