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Core Principle

December 10, 2014

You’re looking down the barrel of the Long Core on the starboard rail of the research vessel Knorr. This one-of-a-kind instrument was developed at WHOI to extract plugs of sediment from the seafloor and can take cores up to 150 long—twice as long as conventional coring devices. Sediments contain physical and chemical clues to ocean conditions and climate thousands to millions of years ago. These collect over time, so longer cores generally contain information that extends further into the past. Knorr required 50 tons of new equipment and significant modifications to deploy and retrieve the Long Core. (Photo by Jayne Doucette, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)