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Swing Low, Sweet Chariot

July 25, 2008

The coastal research vessel Tioga takes shelter in late June at a dock in Rockport Harbor, Mass., where the tides can rise and fall by as much as eight feet. WHOI biology researchers Bruce Keafer and Kerry Norton had spent the day—and would spend the next—sampling for Alexandrium fundyense in the waters from Cape Ann to Cape Cod. The harmful algae had a prodigious bloom this spring, shutting down shellfish beds in much of New England, though weather patterns prevented it from reaching as far south as in the devastating bloom of 2005.
(Photo by Ian Hanley, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)