Early to Rise

A team aboard R/V Thomas Thompson made an early-morning, fog-shrouded recovery of an MC-800 multicorer off the coast of San Diego this February on a cruise to give early career scientists an opportunity to learn the duties of a chief scientist on an expedition aboard a Global Class research vessel as well as the demands and capabilities of different scientific instruments the ships carry. This particular instrument was modified at the WHOI MISO Facility to provide a real-time video link to the surface while collecting sediment samples from features such as deep, hypersaline anoxic basins and hydrocarbon seeps found only on very specific and limited parts of the seafloor. (Photo by Marshall Swartz, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)