Photo of the Week: Bound for the Bottom

A bevy of transponder/benchmark packages designed to measure seafloor deformation await deployment on the deck of Scripps Oceanography research vessel Roger Revelle off the coast of Newport, Oregon earlier this summer. Photo by Noel Bartlow, UC Berkeley.

Precisely positioning six of the packages at two sites was the start of a three-year project called "Assessing the State of Locking on the Frontal Thrust of the Cascadia Subduction Zone with Seafloor Geodesy," lead by Scripps Oceanography research geophysicist C. David Chadwell.

"From offshore Oregon, scientists deployed these units onto various sites in the Cascadia Subduction Zone," said study participant Rita Chen, an Ohio State University student and intern at Scripps' Marine Physical Laboratory. "The orange transponder then sank to the seafloor by the weight of the concrete benchmark. In a later mission, a Wave Glider will travel over these sites and collect GPS data from the benchmark transponders that are now resting on the seafloor."

A second cruise is planned in 2021 to recover the transponders.

Related Image Gallery: Photo of the Week 2018