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Oceanographic Exercise

WHOI researchers struggle to prepare a Bodman bottle for deployment during a cruise on the R/V Crawford in the late 1950s. Marine chemist Vaughan Bowen helped develop the sampling bottle, which he named for WHOI technician Ralph Bodman. Bowen studied radioactive isotopes in seawater, monitoring fallout from nuclear tests and accidents worldwide, and needed to collect large volumes of water to detect trace amounts of chemicals. He also pioneered the use of radionuclides to track the movements of trace elements through the environment, and was one of the first to focus on the transfer of materials to deep waters via the particles now known as marine snow.(Photo courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Archives)