Digging Into a Stormy Past

WHOI coastal geologist Jeff Donnelly, Texas A&M University at Galveston graduate student Tyler Winkler, and Winkler’s advisor, geologist Pete van Hengstum (left to right) pause for a photo during a research expedition in Discovery Bay, Jamaica. Donnelly and his colleagues worked off this small floating platform—and the much larger research vessel Atlantis—to collect sediment cores from ancient flooded sinkholes known as “blue holes.” Donnelly analyzes the sediment layers to create a timeline of past hurricanes based on the debris the storms have left behind. (Photo by Nicole D’Entremont, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)