Feature
Doing the Right Thing for the Right Whale
The situation is urgent: Seventy years after whaling was banned, the North Atlantic right whale population has not recovered. Only 300 to 350 remain, and the species is headed toward…
Read MoreGoing Wireless in the Deep Blue
How do you get long-term ocean measurements from any spot on the globe, with day by day feedback and low costs? If you are Dan Frye of the WHOI Advanced Engineering Laboratory, you take an old oceanographic concept?the moored buoy?and bring it into the 21st century with wireless technology.
Read MoreInstitution Receives Surprise Bequest
The latest news from around the Institution includes: the second-largest donation in WHOI history; training and awards for mid-career journalists; a new fund for graduate student training in seagoing skills; and a successful program for undergraduates.
Read MoreWHOI Opens New Research Facilities
For the first time in 15 years, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has added significant office and laboratory space to its Quissett Campus. This fall, scientists, technical staff, and students started moving into more than 67,000 square feet of new space, a 25 percent increase in the Institution?s scientific facilities.
Read MoreA Touchstone for Marine Chemists and Students Retires
John Farrington touched the lives of hundreds of graduate and undergraduate students. He helped scores of young scientists launch their careers with postdoctoral scholarships. He won the admiration of colleagues for his leadership in the study of organic geochemistry in the ocean. In November, the chemical oceanographer and longtime dean and vice president for Academic Programs at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution stepped aside from his post.
Read MoreTracking an Ocean of Ice Atop Greenland
Sarah Das calls herself a “frozen oceanographer.” Most people look at Greenland and see a vast ice sheet covering Earth’s largest island. But Das sees a huge reservoir of water—temporarily…
Read More10,000 Earth & Ocean Scientists. Five days.
Over the next week, I will be posting daily reports about what’s happening at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting. This is the premier meeting in the field of Earth sciences, and it has…
Read MoreThree Ships and a Sub
short stories of ships and vehicles for fall 2005
Read MoreAction, Camera … Lights
Exploring the sunless seafloor can be like using a flashlight to find something in a dark basement. Now Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientists and engineers have built a portable light system to illuminate the depths, essentially transforming areas of the deep sea into a photography studio.
Read MoreScientists Find a New Twist in How Squids Swim
Erik Anderson was vexed by some scientific papers he read during his first year of graduate studies. Engineers had asserted that squids likely propelled themselves through water by creating vortex rings. Anderson begged to differ. Together with Mark Grosenbaugh, he set up a series of experiments to check the theories against some observational evidence.
Read More‘Seasonal Pump’ Moves Water Between Ocean and Aquifers
Hydrologists Ann Mulligan of WHOI and Holly Michael and Charles Harvey of MIT have cleared up a mystery of why so much salty water emerges from aquifers into the coastal ocean. The researchers discovered a counterintuitive seasonal pumping system at work.
Read MoreShould Eastern Oysters Be Put on the Endangered List?
Eastern oysters in Chesapeake Bay were not as happy as clams, and neither was Wolf-Dieter Busch. The environmental consultant from Maryland knew that overharvesting, habitat loss, poor water quality, and…
Read MoreScientific (and Surfing) Safari
Eric Montie has a great tan, photos of huge waves taped above his computer, and a penchant for grabbing his short board and racing to the beach at a moment’s notice.…
Read MoreA Mysterious Disease Is Infecting Northeast Clam Beds
Scientists follow clues to the mysterious disease that is killing off clams on Cape Cod and along the Eastern Seaboard.
Read MoreFinding Nemo…and Other Endangered Fish
A novel method to track fish larvae?using tetracycline to tag otoliths, or ear bones?sheds lights on which marine areas to protect
Read MoreCold Comfort for Barnacles
A WHOI research team reports that barnacle larvae can remain frozen up to seven weeks and still revive, settle, and grow to reproduce. The discovery offers a new understanding of barnacle larvae, which are abundant sources of food for larger animals in the coastal ocean. It also provides possible clues to how other intertidal marine invertebrates may settle and survive harsh winters.
Read MoreEarth Can’t Soak Up Excess Fossil Fuel Emissions Indefinitely
Earth?s land and oceans have been soaking up the excess carbon Earth?s land and oceans have been soaking up the excess carbon dioxide that humans have pumped into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. But there are limits.
A new-generation computer model indicates that the capacity of land and ocean to absorb and store the heat-trapping greenhouse gas will reach its peak by the end of the century?removing a brake that has been tempering the effects of global warming.
Nafanua, Eel City, and the Crater of Death
WHOI geochemist Stan Hart and colleagues have discovered a fast-growing volcano, dubbed Nafanua, inside the crater of Vailulu’u, a 14-300-foot active volcano that should begin the next island in the Samoan chain. They also found a novel hydrothermal community, which they named “Eel City,” and a lifeless zone in the caldera, which they call the “Crater of Death.”
Read MoreBig Whale, Big Sharks, Big Stink
A shipping tanker first spotted the whale on Sept. 9 about 24 miles southeast of Nantucket, Mass. It floated belly up—species unknown, cause of death a mystery. Like a detective,…
Read MoreFresher Ocean, Cooler Climate
Large and climatically sensitive regions of the North Atlantic Ocean have become less salty since the late 1960s, a trend that could alter global ocean circulation and spur climate changes by the 21st century.
Read MoreBuilding an Automated Underwater Microscope
A conversation with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution biologist Heidi Sosik about her work studying phytoplankton ecology in the coastal ocean and the new instrument, the Imaging FlowCytobot, that she and biologist Rob Olson developed. Sosik describes the importance of phytoplankton to the food web and ecology of the coastal ocean, and how this new instrument, which will be deployed this summer, represents a breakthrough in year-round monitoring of coastal phytoplankton communities.
Read MoreThe Improbable Voyage of Al Woodcock
Al Woodcock, perhaps the last man to sail on the maiden voyage of WHOI’s first research vessel Atlantis in 1931, died Feb. 26. He was 99. A self-educated farm boy from Georgia, Woodcock was also a keen observer of the natural world. He ascended to the scientific staff at WHOI and published seminal papers on “Observations of Herring Gull Soaring,” “The Swimming of Dolphins,” and “Sea Salt in a Tropical Storm.? Starting in 1949, he published a series of seven pioneering papers on sea-salt particles and their role in the formation of fog and rain. His research gained the profound respect of the nation’s foremost scientists.
Read MoreContact Oceanus
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Read MoreAn Experiment to Dye For
WHOI scientists are exploring an experimental technique to track the complex movements of water in the oceans using harmless fluorescent dyes and airplanes equipped with Light Detection and Ranging instruments. To detect motion, LIDAR uses pulses of laser light, which cause the flowing dye to fluoresce.
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