Oceanographers from the University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory are in Samoa for six weeks, the third and final trip studying skyscraper-sized waves that break in a narrow channel in the South Pacific Ocean. Matthew Alford, a researcher at the lab and UW associate professor of oceanography, is leading UW and University of Hawaii researchers aboard the UW’s research vessel Thomas G. Thompson. Before leaving shore last week the researchers blogged about an outreach event in which they helped Samoan children decorate foam busts that they will send 3 miles below the ocean’s surface and bring back as shrunken heads. Learn more about this cruise at UW News.