Pieces of the puzzle

Summer Student Fellow Garrett Mitchell, of the University of Maryland at College Park, spent his summer working with WHOI geologist Adam Soule. The two used seafloor imagery collected by Autonomous Benthic Explorer (ABE) to map lava flows, hydrothermal vents, and biologic communities on the Southern Mid-Atlantic Ridge (5˚S). The image behind them is a mosaic, where each of the several thousand seafloor photographs is pieced together like a puzzle based on the location and attitude (pitch, roll, yaw) of the vehicle. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)