Multimedia

The deep-sea exploration vehicle called Sentry has been festooned with decorations and “faces” over the years, often thanks to WHOI engineer Justin Fujii whose artistic medium is electrical tape. Sentry is an autonomous underwater vehicle…

A WHOI scientific team follows a ridge above the Koettlitz Glacier en route to conducting research in Antarctica in December 2007. The sun is due north over the Ross Sea,…

In 1949, WHOI biologist William Schevill (right) and his wife Barbara Lawrence used a crude hydrophone and a dictating machine to record beluga whales from a small boat in the…

Crowds of family members, WHOI staff, and other well-wishers—including hundreds of journalists and 18 film crews—thronged the pier at WHOI in September 1985, as the research vessel Knorr returned from…

This curious, colorful image may look a little like five bananas, but it is actually a spectrogram of sound waves recorded by a hydrophone in the ocean. More particularly, it…

WHOI scientist Rocky Geyer collects a water sample in the South River in Marshfield, Mass., to analyze the amount of suspended sediments in it. There won’t be much on a…

A curious penguin observes a group of scientists temporarily squatting on an icy terrain in Antarctica. WHOI scientist Ben Van Mooy (right) is leading a team that will core through…

Simulated models of how plastics are transported in the global ocean show that most plastics concentrate in the middle of subtropical gyres (left). However, large-scale ocean circulation systems such as…

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientist Anne Cohen (left) and Nathan Mollica, a graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program, extract core samples from a giant Porites coral in Risong Bay, Palau. They and WHOI scientist Weifu Guo were…

Laura Weber, a graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program, teaches middle and high school students of the U.S. Virgin Islands about the role of microorganisms in the health and…

These marine snails are also called “sea butterflies” because of their winglike swimming appendages. Masses of pteropods drift with currents in the open ocean, where they provide food for fish…

The Red Sea has a number of curious characteristics that are not seen in other oceans. It is extremely warm, surface waters often reach over 86° Fahrenheit, and the waters evaporate…

Scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) are embarking on a long-term study of marine microplastics to answer a litany of questions, including how larger plastics break down into tiny…

Bluefin tuna are the largest of all tuna species—adults can reach ten feet in length and weigh more than a thousand pounds. But they start out small, as 2- to…

Members of a 1947-48 cruise row back to the R/V Atlantis (visible in the background). The primary purpose of the six-month “Med Cruise” was to prepare bathymetric charts of the Agean…

The WHOI research vessels Crawford, Atlantis, and Gosnold (left to right) were all in Woods Hole, Mass., on this warm day in 1963. The Crawford, a 125-foot Coast Guard cutter acquired…