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Quick Turnaround

December 27, 2012

After some careful handling on increasingly lively seas, the autonomous underwater vehicle Sentry is lowered back into its cradle on R/V Melville off the coast of Chile in the Spring of 2012. Almost immediately, technicians in charge of the vehicle began downloading data and preparing it for the next dive. The expedition was led jointly by Chief Scientist Donna Blackman of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and co-principal investigator Chris German from WHOI. Their goal was to survey the Chile Triple Junction, a region where three of Earth’s tectonic plates converge, in order to investigate the complex interactions among the solid earth, the deep ocean, and the biosphere. (Photo by Chris German, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)