Images

Images of the remotely operated vehicle Jason2 sampling a sea urchin in a deep sea mussel community found near a gas seep on the U.S. outer continental shelf. Images courtesy Deepwater Canyons 2013 - Pathways to the Abyss expedition, NOAA-OER/BOEM/USGS.

A lithodid crab seen on a bed of deep sea mussels living near a gas seep 1,600 meters below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean. Images courtesy Deepwater Canyons 2013 - Pathways to the Abyss expedition, NOAA-OER/BOEM/USGS.

Adrian Mann is using a piezometer to extract submarine groundwater to analyze for geochemical parameters in Indian River Bay, DE.

Assessing how storms move sediment during storms provides coastal scientists and managers the information they need to keep coastal communities safe and prosperous. And, lucky for us, provides many opportunities to see great coastal sunsets!

The San Clemente Dam, built in the 1920s on the Carmel River in Monterey County, California, was removed during 2014 and 2015.

Hurricane Sandy moved a house from barrier island to estuary, in this case into Barnegat Bay, NJ. Waves from extreme storms do the same with barrier island sediment.

Debris from Hurricane Sandy (Seaside Heights, NJ) is piled up behind an artificial dune in order to protect island infrastructure from the subsequent winter storm season. Like storms, humans change coasts too.

Surveying A Barrier Island Evolution Research (BIER) program study site in the Chandeleur Islands in 2013. The survey data is used to map the pre-storm conditions.
 

USGS Graduate Research Assistant Legna Torres-Garcia installs a temperature logger on a coral reef in Dry Tortugas National Park. She and her team deployed a vertical array with temperature loggers every 1m from the seabed to near-surface with the goal to capture any changes in temperature through time and across depth.

Drone footage taken of the Woods Hole Oceanographic facility on the Quissett campus in Woods Hole Ma.  This is an example of a tidally restricted marsh system cutoff from tidal flows by the bike path.

Trunk River is an example of a tidally restricted impounded wetland (Cape Cod, MA).

Large Lophelia colonies and numerous anemones at a depth of about 1,500 feet in Mississippi Canyon. Red laser beams, projected from a remotely operated vehicle, represent a separation of 10 centimeters (about 4 inches). A western roughy is seen to the left of the structure.

Aerial images of the wilderness breach: a) Aerial photograph taken several days after Hurricane Sandy (photo credit: NOAA); b) Aerial mosaic of the breach in June 2015 showing the location of erosion on the ocean side of the breach and deposition that results in the seasonal formation of a spit.

A venus flytrap anemone on the lip of a small ridge, with numerous other small animals.

A red crab trying to crack open a seep mussel, seen during the Deepwater Canyons 2012 Expedition.

Perspective view of seafloor offshore of Half Moon Bay, showing scarp (arrows) along the eastern strand of the San Gregorio fault zone. Rocks are notably upwarped and folded adjacent to the fault.

A fish (Gephyroberyx darwinii) peeks through a forest of soft corals and anemones at about 300 meters in depth in the Gulf of Mexico.

Live Lophelia pertusa is white because the calcium carbonate skeleton shows through the nonpigmented coral tissue. Dead coral is soon covered in a brown biofilm. The red-orange squat lobster (Eumunida picta) in the center of the photo is prepared to catch its dinner.

Close-up image of the cold-water coral Lophelia pertusa, with polyps extended. The coral polyps eat by grabbing tiny suspended particulates (visible against the dark water background). The bright orange claws of a squat lobster (Eumunida picta) can be seen peeking out from behind the coral branches.

Close-up of a squat lobster, Eumunida picta, in a thicket of Lophelia pertusa coral.

A conger eel (Conger oceanicus) cruises through a thicket of Lophelia pertusa coral.