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Dick Backus with precision graphic recorder below deck on Bear

Dick Backus with precision graphic recorder below deck on Bear
Dick Backus with precision graphic recorder below deck on Bear
Dick Backus with precision graphic recorder below deck on Bear
Dick Backus with precision graphic recorder below deck on Bear
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Dick Backus with precision graphic recorder below deck on Bear
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11/01/1960
archives/B-C images /bear-77.tiff
Date is approximate.
Image Of the Day caption:
In 1963, WHOI biologist Dick Backus, shown here watching the return from a precision graphic recorder, used a solar eclipse to solve a puzzling oceanographic mystery. For decades, scientists had known that plankton and other organisms migrate vertically in the ocean every day, but no one knew whether the organisms, collectively forming the largest migration on Earth, timed their movements with the sun or some other clock. Backus and a team on the WHOI research vessel Chain watched as the passage of the eclipse triggered the same behaviorsmass vertical movement and an increase in bioluminescent activityas sunset and sunrise, indicating that changing light level was the trigger.
Photo courtesy of WHOI Archives
© Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
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