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Pilot Project

While the crew of R/V Neil Armstrong prepared a 2-kilometer (1.2-mile) mooring line for deployment southeast of Greenland recently, they were visited by a large pod of pilot whales. Like killer whales, pilot whales are among the biggest members of the dolphin family and are highly social, usually traveling in large groups. The mooring they visited is part of the NSF-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative Global Array, operated and maintained by WHOI in the Irminger Sea. The array of four moorings makes around-the-clock measurements of oceanographic and meteorological conditions from the atmosphere to close to the seafloor and relays those data to scientists and the public in near real time. (Image by James Kuo, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)