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Setting the Hook and Fishing Line

Engineering assistant Sean Whelan assembles a mooring hook (left) and acoustic release (yellow tube) for a tricky equipment recovery operation at sea. WHOI technicians and engineers have developed their own techniques for finding and recovering moorings wires and their attached instruments and hardware that get stuck underwater or fail to surface when commanded. Whelan, mooring specialist Jeff Lord, and colleagues recently made a mid-wire catch of pieces of the GUSTO mooring, which had been battered for several years by the extreme currents of the Gulf Stream. (Photo by Patricia White, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)