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Irminger Sea Recovery

April 9, 2017

In 2016 in the Irminger Sea near Greenland, WHOI Deck Operations Leader John Kemp (left of floats at the deck edge), other members of the WHOI Mooring Group, and R/V Armstrong crew members recover a mooring deployed in 2015. Chartreuse floats—glass balls in protective plastic shells—are brought on deck one after another, while the surface buoy they are connected to is a speck on the horizon. This Global Surface Mooring is part of the National Science Foundation-supported Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), a networked infrastructure of sensor systems that measure and monitor ocean conditions. The mooring carries instruments at the air-sea interface and on the vertical cable down to 1,500 meters (4921 feet) that measure conditions and changes in the Irminger Sea, an ocean region important in global ocean circulation. (Photo by Sheri N. White, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)