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Printed Issues
Volume 47, Number 2, September 2009
Greenland glaciers, marine mammals, and Noah’s flood
Glacial lakes speed the flow of ice to the sea
Pathogens are accumulating in marine life
Investigating sonar and whale strandings
Auto-detection whale buoys help avert collisions with ships
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Volume 47, Number 1, 2008
Noxious Corals, Flippered Robots, and 'Talkative' Bacteria
MIT/WHOI Joint Program graduate students describe their scientific pursuits
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Volume 46, Number 3, September 2008
Volcanoes, Pilots Whales, and Climate Change
Undersea volcanoes blow their tops beneath the Arctic Ocean
First glimpse of whales' high-speed, deep-diving hunts revealed
The greenhouse gas you've never heard of—dimethylsulfide
A journey to a land of ice and lava in Antarctica
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Volume 46, Number 2, 2008
Robot 'paints' a stunning seascape/Melting Arctic ice threatens polar bears/Something's rotten in the state of lobster shells
Sonar images reveal submerged Pacific Ocean volcano in glorious detail
Decision to put bears on federal endangered species list is imminent
Something's rotten in the state of New England's favorite crustacean
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Volume 46, No. 1, Jan. 2008
Should We Fertilize the Ocean to Reduce Greenhouse Gases?
Some 80 natural and social scientists from several countries, along with environmental advocates, business representatives, policymakers, legal experts, economists, and journalists, gathered at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on September 26-26, 2007, to discuss the pros and cons of ocean iron fertilization as a means to mediate global warming. Articles in this Oceanus summarize the wide range of issues raised at the conference.
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Volume 45, No. 3, July 2007
Eavesdropping on Whales/Fiddler Crab's Buried Secrets/An Undersea Soundscape
The largest field experiment in the 76-year history of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution sheds light on how sound travels in the coastal ocean. A biologist listens in on the sounds orcas make as they orchestrate their hunts. More silently, crabs answer the question: Does oil spilled in 1969 still have impacts on wildlife in a coastal marsh?
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Volume 45, Number 2, 2006
Into the Mouth of Hell/Gone Fish Assessing
It's one thing to look down the throat of an active volcano. It's another to climb inside. But that's what WHOI geologist Ken Sims did to gather gas samples to explore how the Earth is evolving. In the watery regions of our planet, WHOI scientists have been applying new technologies and methods to help the National Marine Fisheries Service in its daunting task of seeing through the sea to estimate fish stocks and help maintain fisheries and fish habitats.
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Volume 45, Number 1, 2006
Finding a New Species/The Hunt for 18 Degree Water
It's not every day that you discover a new species. Sheri Simmons, a graduate student in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program, a found a previously unknown bacterium, with an unusual "internal compass," in her proverbial backyard: Salt Pond in Falmouth, Mass. Meanwhile in the North Atlantic, WHOI oceanographers launched a far-reaching program to examine the formation and evolution of a long-observed but poorly understood phenomenon of the North Atlantic—18° water—and its influence on climate.
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Volume 44, Number 3, 2005
Is the Arctic Feeling the Heat?
In 2005, the ice cap covering the Arctic Ocean shrank to its smallest size since researchers began keeping records a century ago. In the past five years, scientists reported that many Greenland glaciers are sliding faster to the sea and melting at their edges. Climate simulations indicate that the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will accelerate melting. Are these temporary phenomena or the first hints of long-term climate change? The answers are critical because the Arctic will not just feel the impacts of climate change, it will also cause a cascade of other global changes. As the Arctic goes, most scientists say, so goes the planet.
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Volume 44, Number 2, 2005
A Continuing Tradition of Going to Sea
The birth of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in 1930 arrived simultaneously with berths for scientists aboard Atlantis. Together, the new institution and ship heralded a new era of oceanographic exploration. Much has changed over the past three-quarters of a century, but some things have not: WHOI still provides exceptional access to the sea, and WHOI scientists, engineers, technicians, and students still resolutely head into the field—to the seafloor in the submersible Alvin; into rough winter seas off Cape Hatteras aboard R/V Oceanus; in "dormitory" boats along channels of the Danube Delta; or even, just for fun, in "unboats" to celebrate our 75th anniversary.
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Volume 44, Number 1, 2005
Lessons from the Tsunami
New clues to decipher undersea earthquakes
More than 200,000 people killed. Another 100,000 unaccounted for. Millions of lives terribly disrupted and billions of dollars in damage. The Dec. 26 Indian Ocean tsunami shattered our usual landlocked perspective, brutally reminding us that we live on a dynamic planet, with a dynamic ocean. In this issue of Oceanus, we devote a special section to the scientific lessons learned from the Indian Ocean tsunami and to revitalized efforts to build ocean-monitoring systems.
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Volume 43, Number 2, 2004
Ocean Life
The oceans cover 70 percent of the planet's surface and constitute 99 percent of its living space, and every drop of ocean water holds living things. Without its oceans, Earth would be a rock in space, and life may never have appeared on our planet.
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Volume 43, Number 1, 2004
Coastal Ocean Institute
At the coast—where air, sea, land, and people meet
Coastal waters are the ocean's first line of defense, and that line is showing many signs of stress. The first step in promoting effective stewardship is to recognize and document the problems; as you will read, we are far along in that regard. The challenge now is to move our scientific understanding forward to a point where we can reduce or eliminate some of these problems.
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Volume 42, Number 2, 2004
Deep Ocean Exploration
Investigating Earth's dynamic processes
The ongoing, fundamental forces that forge our planet—that generate earthquakes and volcanoes; that perpetually create and destroy Earth's crust; that rip apart continents and smash them into one another; that create mountains like the Himalayas and island chains like Hawaii; that open and close ocean basins; that forge mineral deposits and generate oil and gas; and that brew chemical cauldrons that sustain rich communities of life in the sunless depths—most of this action occurs beneath the oceans.
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Volume 42, Number 1, 2000
Ocean Observatories
Continuous Access to the Depths, New Heights of Earth Knowledge
To fully understand the causes and effects of events such as El Niño, and new ecosystems such as hydrothermal vents, we need a much better grasp of Earth's complex, dynamic processes before, as, and after they occur. It will require a coordinated investment in a new mode of marine geoscience investigations: the establishment of long-term ocean observatories. Such observatories offer an essential means to observe interrelated processes over time and to fill in the rather extensive gaps in remote ocean regions where data on deep Earth structures and properties have never been collected.
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Volume 41, Number 2, 1998
The Mid-Ocean Ridge: Part 2
Hydrothermeral Vent Systems
The scientists who made the surprising discovery of teeming life around hydrothermal vents of the Gal´pagos Rift in 1977 were geologists and geochemists. They had not expected to find spectacular colonies of previously unknown, large animals on the deep seafloor.
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Volume 41, Number 1, Spring 1998
The Mid-Ocean Ridge: Part 1
The similar but opposing contours of Earth’s continental land mass shorelines has been observed since chart making began. It was not until early in the 20th century that German meteorologist Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift, and understanding that the planet’s crustal plates are created at the mid-ocean ridge boundaries came in the second half of this century. Today, study of the mid-ocean ridge system—whose 40,000-mile length makes it Earth’s largest geographical feature—forms a significant sector of oceanographic science. Our two issues for 1998 offer Oceanus readers insight into the mid-ocean ridge investigations of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientists and their colleagues.
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Volume 40, Number 2, 1997
Catching the Rain
Particle Flux in the World Ocean
Until about 130 years ago, scholars believed that no life could exist in the deep ocean. The abyss was simply too dark and cold to sustain life. The discovery of many animals living in the abyssal environment by Sir Charles Wyville Thompson during HMS Challenger's 1872-1876 circumnavigation stunned the late 19th century scientific community far more than we can now imagine.
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Volume 40, Number 1, 1997
Access to the Sea
Oceanographic fieldwork has traditionally meant going to sea on a ship. In recent years, it has expanded to include activities that may require a ship for a short period but then continue independently. Floats that drift with ocean currents, periodically reporting their positions via satellite, for example, are generally launched from ships but do most of their work independently. Long-term seafloor observatories may need ships to set them up and service them occasionally, but, again, they are designed to collect data for long periods without needing a ship. We have come to think of the body of ways oceanographers glean information from the ocean as "access to the sea," and so that is the topic for this issue of Oceanus.
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Volume 39, Number 2, 1996
Oceans & Climate
The Ocean's Role in Climate & Climate Change
The past decade has brought rapid scientific progress in understanding the role of the ocean in climate and climate change. The ocean is involved in the climate system primarily because it stores heat, water, and carbon dioxide, moves them around on the earth, and exchanges these and other elements with the atmosphere.
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