Image

Securing the Base

June 30, 2014

WHOI engineer John Kemp (left) and a member of the R/V Knorr crew prepare the base of a coastal high power surface mooring (CHPSM) for deployment on the continental slope 80 miles south of Cape Cod. The mooring is part of the Pioneer Array, one of the deep-sea installations that make up the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative. As this video shows, the Pioneer Array is a moveable network of moorings and autonomous robotic vehicles designed to monitor waters of the western Atlantic continental shelf and slope, an area where nutrients, pollutants, plants and animals are exchanged between the coast and the deep ocean.

(Photo by John Lund, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)