Playing in the Mud

MIT/WHOI Joint Program student Carly Strasser sieves mud to find juvenile softshell clams (Mya arenaria) in the summer of 2005 in an estuary in Calves Pasture, Barnstable, Mass. Strasser, now a postdoctoral investigator in the WHOI Biology Department, was trying to determine the connectivity between softshell clam populations in New England. She collected small clams (2 to 5 millimeters in size) from several locations in the region and analyzed their shell composition in the Plasma Mass Spectrometry Facility.

(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)