Last year, researchers led by University of Alaska Fairbanks geologist Sarah Fowell set out on the research vessel Sikuliaq to extract cores of sediment from the floor of the Bering Sea.

A pivotal history of Earth lies submerged beneath the Bering Sea. Today this frigid strait ... and then captured sediment cores from 36 different submerged sites, hundreds of feet underwater.

From the back of a boat, Maio and a group of researchers lowered a metal tube to the blue hole’s floor 150 feet below to capture one of many sediment cores.