From blueprint to reality

Geoff Ekblaw works from engineering drawings (foreground) while welding the foundation mounts for solar panels that will sit atop a moored buoy. A senior fabricator and welder, Ekblaw has spent more than a decade at WHOI working with researchers to find innovative ways to measure and record information about the oceans. The solar panels will be part of a new line of “gumby” mooring systems, which use ultra-stretchy rubber hoses reinforced with nylon to stretch to twice their unstretched length. These flexible mooring hoses have conducting wires embedded in the walls, making it possible to transmit continuous, high-rate, real-time data to the surface and electrical power to bottom instruments. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)