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Dangerous Beauty

December 5, 2013

An ethereal, distant iceberg can can extend to more than 500 meters below the surface and can actually batter and destroy moorings. Physical oceanographer Fiamma Straneo and engineer Will Ostrom took a chance when they deployed this yellow float at 350 meters on a subsurface mooring in East Greenland’s Sermilik Fjord in August 2013 to investigate the role of the ocean in glacier retreat. The mooring will be in the water for two years collecting information about ocean temperature near a major Greenland glacier. (Photo by Will Ostrom, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)