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Water catcher

The five-thousandth Atlantis hydrographic station was recorded in 1960. This photo shows Arnold Clarke making one of those stations. In March 1962, Oceanus magazine gave this description: “A hydrographic station is one of the basic operations in oceanography. To make a station, a series of Nansen bottles with attached thermometers are lowered into the ocean to obtain temperatures and water samples at various depths from surface to bottom. Completing a station takes several hours depending upon the depth to be sampled. Usually two ‘casts’ are made. One above 2000 meters with close-spaced bottles, and one from 2000 meters to the bottom with more widely-spaced bottles.”
(Photo courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)