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Family digs deep in Japan

Jon Woodruff, a recent graduate of the MIT/WHOI Joint Program, is interested in ancient bits of grit and shell that he pulls from lagoons and marshes using hollow metal tubes, called corers. The mud cores tell stories of ancient hurricane patterns, information that could prove useful for predicting future hurricanes. Lacking historic written records beyond a few hundred years, Woodruff and his colleagues at WHOI look deep into sediment to see patterns of storm intensity and frequency. During a trip to gather cores in Japan several years ago, Woodruff received a grant from WHOI’s Coastal Ocean Institute, and help in the field from his wife, Akiko Okusu (right), and mother-in-law, Masako Okusu.
(Photo courtesy of Jon Woodruff, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)