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Taking a Mooring’s Temperature

July 25, 2017

WHOI engineers don’t usually hang out inside walk-in refrigerators, but research engineer John Reine found himself doing just that. Reine needed to test the efficacy of heaters added onto a mooring halo (pictured) to keep it from freezing over at sea. He used an iPhone—equipped with a thermal imaging camera—to take the halo’s temperature. This halo is from a surface mooring in the Global Irminger Sea Array near Greenland, part of the Ocean Observatories Initiative. The mooring has been tipping over in winter storms, with as much as 2,000 pounds of ice accumulating on the halo over the course of the season. Reine says the new heaters are a first step toward keeping the mooring upright. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)