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Bongo Solo

June 23, 2014

Bongo nets are a staple of biological oceanographers who study zooplankton. Named for their paired construction, the bongo net actually consists of two nets, one with a courser weave to collect larger organisms and one with a finer weave to capture small ones. The nets are woven so they capture nothing while being lowered from a ship, but as the seawater passes through them on their way back to the surface, they collect thousands of specimens. Here, the crew of the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy recover a bongo net from the water during the Arctic Spring research expedition.(Photo by Amanda Kowalski)