2011 Photo Highlights : 2011 Annual Report

1. Crystal Breier, Kamila Stastna, Ken Buesseler, and Sachiko Yoshida (left to right) draw water from a rosette sampler in June 2011 on board the R/V Ka'imikai-o-Kanaloa. The cruise was organized by Buesseler, a marine chemist at WHOI, to track radiation released from the nuclear power plants in Japan after the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami severely damaged its cooling and emergency systems. As a graduate student, Buesseler got his start in oceanography studying the spread of radiation from the accident at Chernobyl (pdf) in the Black Sea. (Photo by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

2. Marine biologist Hannes Baumann (far right) from State University of New York (SUNY) Stony Brook prepares to get a line on a Methot net from the stern of the research vessel Ka'imikai-o-Kanaloa off the northeast coast of Japan in June 2011. Baumann and others were on board the cruise organized by WHOI's Ken Buesseler to study the spread, fate, and impacts of radiation released from the damaged nuclear power plant at Fukushima. The net was tailored to capture small fish and large plankton (nekton) that are one step on the food chain above phytoplankton and the smallest marine animals and that are, in turn, eaten by larger fish. (Photo by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

3. MIT/WHOI Joint Program graduate students Britta Voss (back) and Sarah Rosengard (front) sample the Fraser River at McBridge in the upper reaches of the Rocky Mountain Trench in June 2011. Their work is part of a worldwide study of major rivers and their drainage basins led by WHOI geochemist Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink. The project will generate a unique dataset and serve as a benchmark for future studies aimed at tracking the impact of environmental change on carbon transport from land to the oceans. Results will also provide a framework for interpreting longer-term records of environmental change that are preserved in marine sediments deposited seaward of river mouths. (Photo by Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

4. An aerial view of Hell's Gate from the Airtram in British Columbia, taken during Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink's 2011 Fraser River expedition. At this location, the Fraser River is funneled through a narrow gorge only about 30 meters wide. During the spring freshet, the river can be two to three times as deep as it is wide here and the flow can surpass twice the volume of Niagara Falls. Because of this, Hell's Gate is a major obstacle for salmon migrating upstream to spawning grounds and fish tunnels have been installed on both sides to maintain the upper Fraser River basin as a viable salmon habitat. (Photo by Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

5. Marine chemist Ken Buesseler (left) and University of Hawaii technician Paul Balch make a final inspection of a rosette sampler prior to deploying the instrument. Buesseler organized the cruise aboard the R/V Ka'imikai-O-Kanaloa to trace the path of radiation released from the tsunami-battered nuclear reactor in Fukushima, Japan. The group of 17 physical, chemical, and biological oceanographers on board spent two weeks in June taking water, air, and biological samples in an effort to understand the fate and impacts of radiation in the northwest Pacific. (Photo by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

6. WHOI geochemist Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink samples a small stream in the "Ancient Forest" of the upper Fraser River basin as part of the Global Rivers Project. The region in British Columbia includes a patch of old-growth inland rain forest with trees at least 1,000 years old. Since many are hollow inside, tree rings cannot be used to determine the ultimate age of the trees, so some may be as much as 2,000 years old. The project aims to understand the export of organic and inorganic carbon from land to ocean via rivers. (Photo by Britta Voss, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

7. This intriguing trail sign greeted the Fraser River Expedition led by WHOI's Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink in May in the woods of western Canada. The expedition was part of the Global Rivers Project, an effort to examine the link between the land and the oceans in order to better understand the interconnection between the global water cycle and the global carbon cycle. (Photo by Bernhard Peucker-Ehrenbrink, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

8. Stony Brook University marine biologist Hannes Baumann holds a hatchetfish brought to the surface in a net trawl off the northeast coast of Japan in June. Baumann and 16 other physical, chemical, and biological oceanographers took part in a two-week cruise organized by WHOI's Ken Buesseler to study the fate and impact of radiation released from the nuclear power plant at Fukushima after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. One of the questions the cruise hopes to resolve is whether radioactive isotopes are being passed up the food chain. Hatchetfish live in the deep ocean and migrate at night to the surface to feed on plankton and small fish. In turn, they also become prey for larger fish. (Photo by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

9. Marine chemist Ken Buesseler pays his respects at Namiwake Shrine outside the city of Sendai, Japan, prior to departing on a cruise to study radiation releases into the ocean from the Fukushima power plant. The current shrine buildings were constructed in 1920 to commemorate the Jogan tsunami in 869 A.D., which inundated a region very similar to that flooded in March after the magnitude 9 earthquake off the coast of northeastern Japan. The land on which the shrine sits was spared in both events. (Photo by Ken Kostel, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

10. In April, Coastal Ocean Institute director Chris Reddy returned to the Gulf of Mexico with research assistant Catherine Carmichael (above). The pair visited several beaches around the Gulf to collect samples of tar balls caused by last year's blowout of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig. Back in Woods Hole, Reddy, Carmichael, and their colleagues will submit their samples to a variety of tests to determine the origin of the oil and the changes it has undergone since being released into the ocean. (Photo by Chris Reddy, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

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Biogeochemist Phoebe Lam took advantage of clear conditions to climb Observation Hill, adjacent to McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Lam and her team are working with three other institutions to determine the causes of large summertime algal blooms in the Ross Sea. Because iron increases photosynthetic efficiency and photosynthetic rates, she and her colleagues are investigating the relative importance of warm salty intrusions of deep water versus tidal resuspension of sediments as sources of iron to surface waters of the Ross Sea.

(Photo by Dan Ohnemus, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

12. WHOI researchers (l to r) Chris Reddy, Sean Sylva, and Jeff Seewald prepare to tap into the pressurized chamber holding material collected from the damaged wellhead at the Deepwater Horizon oil spill site. A team from WHOI had used a specialized device called an Isobaric Gas-Tight sampler (black object near Seewald) to collect the material, which was the only sample taken directly from the broken wellhead. The sample was analyzed for its gas and oil content, to estimate the amount of each released during the spill. It also served as a reference to determine whether unknown oil samples came from the spill. Seewald and others at WHOI designed the sampler about 10 years ago to collect fluids spewing from hydrothermal vents. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

13. In February 2011, research assistant Catherine Carmichael and research specialist Robert Nelson transferred possession of critical oil samples and chain-of-custody records to U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer John Agapito (right) and Dr. Wayne Gronlund, manager of the U.S.C.G. Marine Safety Laboratory (not shown). Researchers Chris Reddy, Rich Camilli, and Sean Sylva together with a team of WHOI engineers used a device developed by Jeff Seewald to collect the samples directly from the stream of oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico. The Coast Guard escorted the samples to Woods Hole and observed as scientists withdrew samples of the oil and gas mixture in order to determine their chemical “fingerprint.” With the analysis complete, the remaining samples were returned to USCG custody. (Photo by Jayne Doucette, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

14. Twenty-five years ago today, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded and burned, creating what was at the time the largest accidental release of radiation to the environment. Ken Buesseler was at the time a young MIT/WHOI Joint Program student in marine chemistry studying radiation in the North Atlantic from Cold War-era nuclear weapons testing. He and his colleagues immediately began tracking the fate of fallout from Chernobyl in the Black Sea. Although radiation levels there remain higher than most other ocean basins, the Black Sea is safe for swimming and fishing. Today, Buesseler finds himself monitoring releases from the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in northern Japan that was damaged following the March 11, 2011, earthquake and tsunami. (Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

15. Alyson Santoro, a WHOI postdoctoral investigator in the department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry, checks on cultures of marine ammonia-oxidizing bacteria. The bacteria are used by Santoro and Joint Program student Carly Buchwald in experiments to study their isotope effects (differences in mass), important values for interpreting nitrogen and oxygen stable isotope measurements in the ocean. Santoro is on a research cruise in the southern Pacific Ocean from mid-March through April, during which she will be investigating a missing part of the global nitrogen cycle. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

16. WHOI's Laura Sofen assists with water sampling during a recent cruise to the North Atlantic led by Associate Scientist Benjamin Van Mooy. The cruise focused on examining the role of fatty compounds known as lipids in marine plankton. Within the field of oceanography, lipid molecules have generally been regarded as passive components of cell membranes, but Van Mooy’s lab is helping rethink this view. Sofen joined the lab as a summer student fellow in 2010 after graduating from Carleton College, and is continuing her work with lipids until she leaves for the Peace Corps in April. (Photo by Benjamin Van Mooy, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

17. Iron is essential for life, but is remarkably scarce in the ocean. WHOI scientists led by biogeochemist Mak Saito recently discovered that a key marine bacterium, Crocosphaera watsonii, may have evolved a biochemical trick to recycle the element and reduce the organism's iron requirments by half. The organism is named after WHOI microbiologist Stanley W. Watson who, in the 1970s, with colleagues Freddy Valois and John Waterbury, discovered the cyanobacteria’s abundance and importance in the ocean. (Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Last updated: July 6, 2012