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In His Element

November 3, 2014

WHOI senior research specialist Jim Broda stands on deck of R/V Knorr in front of the Long Core system’s main winch just prior to Knorr‘s departure from WHOI on its final science cruise. The rope on the winch is actually twelve high-strength, low-friction ropes braided together into a single line more than 7,000 meters (4.2 miles) long. With 5,000 meters (3 miles) of line out and under a 25,000-pound load, the rope will only stretch about 2 meters (6 feet). This is crucial to reducing rebound as the system pulls the long, heavy cores out of the seabed.(Photo by Jayne Doucette, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)