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Science Highlights
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 On
top of the world
WHOI researchers scouted the perfect spot to deploy instruments in the Beaufort Sea in the western Arctic Ocean. |
 In whale blubber, a tiny, telltale chemical clue
Emma Teuten may be a vegetarian, but that didn’t
deter her from seeking intriguing chemical clues in
whale blubber to an important marine pollution issue. |
 Delicate
life in the depths
In near-freezing waters thousands of meters below the ocean
surface, communities of brightly colored corals bloom
on the seafloor, living quiet, long lives far from sunlight and
waves. |
 Round
and round it goes
At first glance, it looks like an art project: a spinning Plexiglas box filled with paint. To Claudia
Cenedese, the box contains the ocean—but on a
miniature scale. |
 Rambling
and rumbling on an island volcano
The Samoan island of Ta’u is a tropical paradise, but Rhea Workman
knows it was created by an undersea volcano that is still active.
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 Thar
she feeds
The North Atlantic right whale never rebounded from centuries of whaling, and fewer than 350 remain. With the species edging toward extinction, the WHOI Ocean Life Institute mustered scientists from several institutions and with a diverse range of expertise to launch the collaborative Right Whale Research and Conservation Initiative in 2004. |
Teamwork for discovering
vents on the seafloor
Like deep-sea treasure hunters, the oceanographers
and engineers began their search with a rough map
and a few clues. They sought neither silver nor gold, but
hydrothermal vents in the Lau Basin, a previously unexplored area in the southwest Pacific Ocean. |
 The
(more) intelligent robot
WHOI engineers call them pickup trucks, though
these underwater vehicles are a bit sleeker than
the typical terrestrial model from Detroit. And these
multi-purpose workhorses drive themselves. |
 How
do deltas form and evolve?
They traveled in small “dormitory” boats from Tulcea, Romania, where the roads end, to their base station near the Black Sea coast. They cruised along canals and tributaries to find ancient beach sediments and used sonar to map the seafloor near the mouth of the Danube River. |
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