2008 Photo Highlights

• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• 6

On June 5, 2008, WHOI senior scientist Scott Doney (center) testified before the Subcommittee on Energy and Environment of the U.S. House of Representatives' Committee on Science and Technology. Doney, a marine chemist, joined colleagues in offering insight on the Federal Ocean Acidification Research and Monitoring Act, which will establish and coordinate efforts to understand the effect of increased ocean acidification on marine life and to develop techniques to effectively conserve marine ecosystems. Doney is flanked by Joan Kleypas of the National Center for Atmospheric Research and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution for Science.

Research assistant Justin Ossolinski (yellow) and assistant scientist Ben Van Mooy (orange) examine Niskin bottles stowed in an incubation tank on the stern of the research vessel Oceanus during an April 2008 expedition in the North Atlantic. The bottles were hooked up to a new "respirometer" being developed by WHOI engineer Sheri White and Van Mooy to understand the rate at which marine bacteria consume oxygen. The tank on the ship's deck was set up with flowing sea water to keep the bottles at near-constant temperature, as if the bacteria inside the bottles were still living in the surrounding water.

Ellen Murphy, a high school student from Minnesota, and Chris Reddy, WHOI marine chemist, examine samples of plastic in Reddy's laboratory in May 2008. Murphy, Reddy, and other lab technicians and students have been collecting plastic debris from Cape Cod beaches to examine their contents and origin. In this photo, Murphy is trying to figure out if the plastic is polypropylene or high-density polyethylene.

Biogeochemist Karen Casciotti is working to understand how microorganisms affect the exchange of excess nutrients (principally nitrate) between groundwater and the coastal ocean. Casciotti and colleagues are using microbiological, molecular, and chemical techniques to understand which nitrogen-metabolizing microbes are present in the Waquoit Bay (Falmouth, Mass.) subterranean estuary and at what rate they are removing nitrogen from the system.

In August 2008 R/V Oceanus made a transect across part of the eastern Atlantic, from Barbados to Cape Verde. Chief scientist Edward Boyle (MIT) led a research group including Pheobe Lam (assistant scientist) and Stephanie Owens (MIT/WHOI Joint Program student) both of WHOI’s Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry Department. Their object was to map dissolved and particulate iron—an essential nutrient for phytoplankton at the base of ocean food webs. All along the way, researchers tested the water at different depths using an important piece of oceanographic equipment, the CTD rosette. This instrument measures depth, temperature, and conductivity (a proxy for salinity, or salt content) of the water, and collects water samples in the circle of gray bottles, whose lids are held open during descent, then closed upon an electrical signal from the ship.

WHOI scientist Phoebe Lam (right), WHOI-MIT joint program student James Saenz (center), and Pericles Silva (left) from Instituto Nacional de Desenvolvimento das Pescas in Cape Verde, deploy a vane sampler during a September 2008 cruise off the coast of West Africa. The sampler, which has no external metal surfaces, is used to prevent contamination of water samples that will be analyzed for trace amounts of iron. Lam, of WHOI’s Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry Department, and colleagues are testing the hypothesis that the continental margin of northwest Africa provides significant amounts of iron to the eastern tropical Atlantic.