Photo of the Week: Shining Through

Sunlight glistens through a jar of copepods, a pelagic octopus, arrow worms, amphipods, a red Penaeid shrimp, and other organisms collected about 300 kilometers (186 miles) off San Diego during a recent cruise for California Cooperative Oceanic Fisheries Investigations (CalCOFI). Photo by James Wilkinson for Scripps Oceanography and CalCOFI.

The fisheries investigations organization normally conducts a multi-day survey off the California coast every quarter on a strict schedule, but this cruise originally set to begin Jan. 7 had to be postponed one month and retrieve fewer samples than normal because the federal government shutdown temporarily prevented use of NOAA Ship Ruben Lasker.

CalCOFI has monitored the region's marine environment and management of its living resources since 1949, making the California coast among the most extensively studied ocean regions in the world. CalCOFI is a collaboration among the California Department of Fish & Wildlife, NOAA Fisheries Service and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.

Follow CalCOFI on Twitter for more images and cruise updates.

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