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Motion Beneath the Ocean

April 3, 2012

Scientists aboard the R/V Atlantis recover an ocean-bottom seismograph (OBS) off the Galapagos Islands. Seismographs measure movement in the Earth’s crust, and scientists use data from these instruments to calculate the energy released by earthquakes. A recent $1 million grant from the W. M. Keck Foundation will allow a WHOI team led by geologist Jeff McGuire and John Collins, director of WHOI’s OBS Lab, to build and install the first seafloor geodesy observatory above one of the most dangerous faults in North America, the Pacific Northwest’s Cascadia fault.(Photo by Jeff McGuire, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)