OBS coming out of ocean

SIO recovery of an OBS during the late afternoon. The orange slabs on the top of the instrument is a new technology used for the first time ever on these instruments specifically for this project. The experiment requested that seismometers be deployed at depths never before attempted with the national OBS pool down to 6000 meters (3.7 miles!). The orange foam is made of syntactic foam which has tiny air filled glass balls for flotation and makes the instrument package buoyant after the steel weights are released.