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Drilling Down

June 25, 2012

Every year since 2003, researchers have traveled to the Arctic north of Alaska aboard the Canadian icebreaker Louis S. St. Laurent for a month to study the Beaufort Gyre. In 2005, WHOI engineers John Kemp (standing) and Kris Newhall prepared to drill into the ice to extract instruments frozen beneath. Neil Jollymore, a member of the Canadian Coast Guard, carried the rifle as a precaution while on polar bear watch. When the team heads out again this August, they will use an array of instruments to measure the environment above, below, and within the floating sea ice.

(Photo by Chris Linder, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)