Image

Ready for a Closeup

March 20, 2013

A camera attached to the bottom of a multicore caught this view of seafloor organisms and a pink dumbo octopus right before the instrument reached the bottom. A multicore drives eight plastic tubes into the seafloor to collect cylindrical samples of sediment. In 2012, WHOI scientist Joan Bernhard deployed the multicore in the Santa Barbara Basin, where she and colleagues have been studying foraminifera and other microscopic organisms that live in seafloor sediment. The camera, from the Multidisciplinary Instrumentation in Support of Oceanography (MISO) Facility, an instrument loan program at WHOI, allowed them to see what kinds of surface seafloor organisms were present where the cylinders took their samples.(Photo courtesy of Dan Fornari, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)