Image

Endurance Testing

Workers from WHOI and Oregon State University deploy a Multi-Function Node (MFN) from the fantail of the R/V Wecoma near Newport, Oregon, in March 2011. After entering the water, the node came to rest on the seafloor but remained attached to the buoy seen floating behind the ship. The MFN was designed to house a variety of scientific instruments and allow recovery of the mooring anchor. The mooring (buoy plus node), which was built at WHOI, is a prototype of others that will be deployed as part of the Endurance Array of the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a long-term, multi-institution integrated system collecting data to improve our understanding of inter-related systems in the ocean and on the seafloor.

(Photo courtesy of John Lund, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)