Images

Scientists recover the Benthic OBservation camera Sled, or “BOB Sled,” onto the research vessel Parke Snavely

Photograph from a mounted time-lapse camera looking eastward along Barter Island’s north shore document how the coastal bluffs and beach changed during a single summer. The photograph shows a late-summer extreme storm with waves crashing into the bluff (September 3, 2014).

Photograph from a mounted time-lapse camera looking eastward along Barter Island’s north shore document how the coastal bluffs and beach changed during a single summer. The photograph shows a summer storm from the west eroding the beach (July 25, 2014).

Photographs from a mounted time-lapse camera looking eastward along Barter Island’s north shore document how the coastal bluffs and beach changed during a single summer. Photograph B: Ice-free and wide beach; dark-colored material on beach is fine-grained sediment eroded from bluffs (July 10, 2014).

Photo from a time-lapse camera looking eastward along the north shore of Barter Island on Alaska’s Arctic coast, June 15, 2014. View the complete time-lapse sequence to see how the coastal bluffs and beach changed during a single summer.

Underwater photo of a healthy coral reef.

Large swells from the north-northeast with heights up to 5 meters (16 feet) combined with unusually high tides inundated much of the Republic of the Marshall Islands on March 2, 2014.

Waves wash over a road on Roi-Namur Island, Kwajalein Atoll in the Republic of the Marshall Islands, during a particularly high tidal event. USGS is studying how slightly reduced rainfall combined with sea-level rise affect freshwater sources on low-lying Pacific coral islands.

After dam removal on the Elwha River, the site of a previous survey had finer grained sediment. Surveyor in the distance is James Starr of the USGS Washington Water Science Center.

Wave-driven flooding and overwash on Roi-Namur Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands

Wave-driven flooding and overwash on Roi-Namur Atoll, Republic of the Marshall Islands

Schematic geologic cross section of Southern Oʻahu showing groundwater–seawater interaction in the vicinity of Honolulu, HI (modified from Frans et al., 2012).

Satellite image of Hawaiʻi captured by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite on January 26, 2014

Northwestern Washington, showing locations of Puget Sound, Hood Canal, and Lynch Cove. Boundaries of Olympic National Park are outlined in red.

An inflatable boat floating above a submarine groundwater vent was used as a multi-day mooring platform for making time-series measurements of the naturally occurring groundwater tracers radon (²²²Rn) and thoron (²²⁰Rn). Gray surface buoys closer to the beach mark locations of thermistor arrays and wave/tide gauges.

BOBSled suspended by its tow cable. The tow cable has one single-mode fiber-optic line for video transmission, eight conductors for system power and control, a Kevlar layer for strength, and a urethane jacket for abrasion resistance and water exclusion.

Interactive map (here with added labels) allows viewers to zoom into areas of interest; video tracklines appear in purple and photograph locations (dots) in red. (At scales shown here, red dots are too closely spaced to distinguish.) Clicking on a trackline starts video in the lower-left window and associated photographs in the lower-right window.

A wall of Desmophyllum dianthus cup corals with bonus octopus neighbor.

BOBSled with its major components labeled. The system collects high-definition (HD) video images of seafloor as deep as 100 meters and is easily hand deployed from a small boat. The video imagery is viewed and recorded in real time at the surface.

Six of 12 map sheets included in the USGS CSMP map-set publication “Hueneme Canyon and Vicinity,” the first CSMP Santa Barbara Channel map set to be published. A, bathymetry; B, seafloor character; C, perspective views; D, potential habitats; E, shallow subsurface geology and structure; F, offshore-onshore geology and geomorphology.

Assemblage of invertebrates living on a steep submarine canyon wall, seen during the Deepwater Canyons 2013 - Pathways to the Abyss.