Surprises from Below

This spring, first-year students in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program who enrolled in the introductory course in biological oceanography had the opportunity to participate in a field exercise on R/V Tioga. During the cruise, students gained first-hand experience in sampling and identifying organisms that live in the ocean or beneath the seafloor. Here, first-year students (left to right) Alexis Fischer and Ellie Bors, aided by guest instructor and WHOI biologist Lauren Mullineaux, screen a sediment sample taken by a bottom grab. Prize finds in this year’s bottom sampling were two large parchment worms (Chaeopterus spp.) and a commensal parchment worm crab.(Photo by Li Ling Hamady, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)