Feature

Rebuilding Alvin: Durante & Skowronski

May 23, 2014

The new Alvin has a new, slightly larger personnel sphere. Still, getting all the necessary equipment to fit inside the sphere took a Herculean effort.

Rebuilding Alvin: Bruce Strickrott

May 16, 2014

Now that the newly upgraded Alvin has resumed operations, a pilot and scientist describe how some of the new features of the submersible are changing the way they are using the vehicle.

Rebuilding Alvin: Humphris & Strickrott

Now that the newly upgraded Alvin has resumed operations, a pilot and scientist describe how some of the new features of the submersible are changing the way they are using the vehicle.

Rebuilding Alvin: Anthony Tarantino

May 9, 2014

Anthony Tarantino, assistant project manager for the upgrade, explains the electrical systems in the new Alvin.

Rebuilding Alvin: Rod Catanach

Engineer Rod Catanach describes the fabrication, testing, and installation of the syntactic foam that provides buoyancy for Alvin.

Ready, Set, Dive

May 1, 2014

Before scientists go to work in the morning at the bottom of the ocean in the submersible Alvin, a team of engineers, pilots, and ship’s crew performs a carefully orchestrated choreography.

Uncovering the Ocean’s Biological Pump

April 25, 2014

Dan Ohnemus clearly remembers the highlight of his fourth-grade class in Bourne, Mass. He and his classmates made a satellite call to scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) who…

Rebuilding Alvin: Jonathan Howland

April 9, 2014

The 25th installment in our series on the people at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who helped design and build the new and improved version of the submersible Alvin.

Rebuilding Alvin: Phil Forte

April 2, 2014

A new installment in our series on the team of people at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who helped design and build the new and improved version of the submersible Alvin.

Of The River and Time

March 26, 2014

The Fraser River in western Canada is flowing with tiny time capsules. Inside them is a fascinating history of Earth’s landscape and climate. For the past four years, I have…

A River Runs Through It

The geochemical journey of carbon from the atmosphere to the river.

Jet Stream Gets Fish in Hot Water

March 19, 2014

WHOI scientists traced a heat wave in the North Atlantic, and the disruption of fisheries that it caused, to an unusual pattern in air circulation months earlier.

Detours on the Oceanic Highway

March 13, 2014

WHOI graduate student Isabela Le Bras is exploring newly discovered complexities of the Deep Western Boundary Current, a major artery in the global ocean circulation system that transports cold water south from the North Atlantic.

A Buoy’s Long Strange Trip

March 6, 2014

Since 2004, WHOI scientists have deployed ice-tether profilers (ITPs) in polar sea ice to monitor changing conditions in the Arctic. ITP 47 found its way to the coast of Ireland.

Li’l Alvin

February 27, 2014

Tom Ryder is a professional underwater diver and a radio-controlled model builder. That combination, naturally, led to a fully operational miniature version of the deep-sea sub Alvin.

Mysterious Jellyfish Makes a Comeback

February 13, 2014

In July 2013, Mary Carman, a researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, was diving in Farm Pond on Marthaâs Vineyard when something that felt like hypodermic needles stung her face.

Message Bottled in an Email

February 6, 2014

Amid the dunes of a tiny island in the North Atlantic, a scientist found a sandblasted bottle with a note in it.

WHOI CSI Lab Investigates Rare Whales

January 30, 2014

Two seldomly seen deep-diving whales called True’s beaked whales were found dead on a beach on Long Island, N.Y. Why did the whales, an adult female and male juvenile,die?

What Causes the Atlantic to Bloom?

January 15, 2014

Every spring, waters in the North Atlantic Ocean explode into green and white patches as countless microscopic marine plants bloom.

Can Squid Abide Ocean’s Lower pH?

January 9, 2014

To most people, squid are calamari: delicious when fried. But to WHOI researchers Max Kaplan and Aran Mooney, squid are another reason to be concerned about ocean acidification.