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Tank Test

June 12, 2014

Members of WHOI’s Deep Submergence Lab took the new Nereid Under Ice (nUI) vehicle through tank tests in 2013. The vehicle uses the same fiber optic technology first used in the hybrid remotely operated vehicle Nereus plus extra power and a hydrodynamic shape to give it unmatched lateral range from its support ship. This will permit scientists to make extensive observations and collect samples from beneath floating glacial ice tongues and ice-shelves, as well as undisturbed sea ice. Nereid UI will see its first engineering and science trials on a trip to the Arctic this summer, carrying sensors that WHOI biologist Sam Laney and colleagues from the Afred Wegener Institute for Polar Research will use to examine how phytoplankton live in the ocean underneath sea ice.(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)