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Ready, Set, Dive
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.
Read MoreUncovering the Ocean’s Biological Pump
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…
Read MoreRebuilding Alvin: Jonathan Howland
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.
Read MoreRebuilding Alvin: Phil Forte
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.
Read MoreOf The River and Time
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…
Read MoreA River Runs Through It
The geochemical journey of carbon from the atmosphere to the river.
Read MoreJet Stream Gets Fish in Hot Water
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.
Read MoreDetours on the Oceanic Highway
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.
Read MoreA Buoy’s Long Strange Trip
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.
Read MoreLi’l Alvin
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.
Read MoreMysterious Jellyfish Makes a Comeback
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.
Read MoreMessage Bottled in an Email
Amid the dunes of a tiny island in the North Atlantic, a scientist found a sandblasted bottle with a note in it.
Read MoreWHOI CSI Lab Investigates Rare Whales
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?
Read MoreWhat Causes the Atlantic to Bloom?
Every spring, waters in the North Atlantic Ocean explode into green and white patches as countless microscopic marine plants bloom.
Read MoreCan Squid Abide Ocean’s Lower pH?
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.
Read MoreLush Life, Deep Down
Scientists find an active ecosystem of bacteria, archaea, and fungi in the sediments far beneath the sea floor.
Read MoreWHOI Scientists Garner Awards in 2013
As the year 2013 ends, we profile scientists who recently received awards and recognition for their work.
Read MoreBehold the ‘Plastisphere’
Plastic debris provides living space for a variety of marine microbes.
Read MoreDropping a Laboratory into the Sea
Scientists at WHOI deploy moored robotic laboratories in the Gulf of Maine for long-term monitoring of red tide algae
Read MoreCall of the Whales
Robotic gliders equipped with acoustic monitoring devices can now eavesdrop on whales, enabling researchers to locate the elusive animals before they surface and to warn ship pilots in the area to slow down to reduce the chances of a deadly collision.
Read MoreThe Return of the Seals
WHOI biologist Rebecca Gast examines whether the recovered and thriving population of gray seals in Cape Cod waters has affected water quality off the beaches they frequent.
Read MoreThe Decline and Fall of the Emperor Penguin?
Climate change is shifting conditions on which Emperor penguins in Antarctica depend to sustain their populations.
Read MoreWhat Doomed the Stromatolites?
About a billion years before the dinosaurs became extinct, stromatolites roamed the Earth until they mysteriously disappeared. Well, not roamed exactly. Stromatolites (“layered rocks”) are rocky structures made by photosynthetic…
Read MoreAn Oddity about Lyme Disease Bacteria
The bacterial species that causes Lyme disease avoids a key human defense by not requiring iron. For a WHOI microbial chemist, that raised a big question: What does it use instead of iron?
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