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Tiny Eyes

January 23, 2012

Look closely and you will see black and white eyes in these fish eggs. Mussels, snails, sponges, and other marine life commonly use cables and instruments left in the sea as substrates to live and grow on. In this case, the instruments that this mooring line held were placed off Martha’s Vineyard to study the dynamics of the shallow inner shelf. MIT/WHOI Joint Program graduate student Rachel Horwitz recently wrote an article on this for Oceanus magazine. The region is important to study because anything that moves between the beach and the open ocean—from animal larvae to pollutants—must pass through it.(Photo by Rachel Horwitz, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)