Line Out

WHOI Mooring Operations and Engineering Group member Meghan Donohue keeps an eye on the mooring line as she leads recovery of a Global Surface Mooring during a recent R/V Neil Armstrong cruise to the Global Irminger Sea Array, part of the NSF-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The device she has her eye on is a compact CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) sensor, one of several dozen different instruments attached to the line or the buoy in the background. The array’s surface mooring and two sub-surface moorings give scientists a comprehensive, round-the-clock look at the ocean and atmosphere in a region critical to Earth’s climate system. (Photo by Rebecca Travis, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)