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To the Breaking Point

Engineering assistant Barbara Callahan operates the computer interface of a hydraulic tensile machine in WHOI’s rigging shop, as shop manager Rick Trask looks on. Callahan and Trask were testing the breaking strength of a surface buoy bale—a metal loop on top of a buoy to which a line can be attached to control the surface buoy during deployment or recovery. The rigging shop uses tensile machines to pull test mooring wires, to verify the manufacturer’s listed breaking strength for new wires and synthetic materials, and to test the breaking strength of wires and ropes to be used on UNOLS vessels. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)