Under the volcano

Why study a volcano only on the surface, when you can also go under it? Fifteen MIT/WHOI Joint Program graduate students and their instructors explored the Venado caves near Arenal Volcano in Costa Rica in June 2008. The caves, 15 million to 20 million years old, were once submerged in seawater and host to corals. Now, they house bats (hence the face masks to curtail guano inhalation). The field trip capped the annual WHOI Geodynamics Program, a semester of weekly seminars, given by scientists invited from many research institutions, on cutting-edge research on a particular earth sciences topic.
(Photo by Jay Barr, Massachusetts Institute of Technology)