Biology
Sea Life Is Accumulating Pathogens
An unprecedented survey of seabirds, marine mammals, and sharks on the U.S. East Coast has revealed that marine wildlife contains a wide variety of disease-causing microbes—including many that have developed…
Read MoreCytobot Gives Early Red Tide Warning
An automated underwater microscope developed by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) detected an unexpected bloom of toxic algae in the Gulf of Mexico in February 2008. The fortunate…
Read MoreDMS: The Climate Gas You’ve Never Heard Of
For generations of mariners, a tangy, almost sweet odor served as a signal that land was nearby. What sailors called “the smell of the shore” had the opposite meaning to…
Read MoreSeabirds Use Their Sense of Smell to Find Food
Until about 40 years ago, people thought birds had no sense of smell. John J. Audubon, the great bird artist and naturalist, had said so in 1826, after conducting experiments…
Read MoreThe Sound of Sonar and the Fury about Whale Strandings
Eight years ago, several U.S. Navy destroyers used sonar in the Bahamas during routine training exercises. Within 36 hours, 17 animals—including 14 beaked whales, one of the world’s deepest-diving whale…
Read MoreScientists Investigate Mysterious Duck Die-offs
Andrea Bogomolni was in a skiff near shore when she saw the ducks in October of 2007: “It was surreal,” the biologist remembered. “You could see hundreds of lifeless brown,…
Read MoreMelting Ice Threatens Polar Bears’ Survival
The Department of Interior’s imminent decision on whether to place polar bears on the federally protected endangered species list has focused attention on a recent study that documents for the…
Read MorePilot Study Examines Ciguatera Fish Poisoning
It is one of the most common illnesses from eating seafood, sickening more than 50,000 people a year, and it is on the rise around the world. Yet most people…
Read MoreEavesdropping on Whales’ Mealtime Conversation
Like a knife slicing through denim, the black dorsal fin broke the surface of the icy water quickly, and then disappeared into the depths. “Off the port bow,” yelled Ari…
Read MoreInnovative Tagging Technique May Help Researchers Better Protect Fish Stocks
Simon Thorrold, a fish ecologist from WHOI, has received a new research grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to use harmless chemical tags to track the dispersal of the larvae of coral reef fishes in the western Pacific Ocean.
Read MoreFollowing Whales Up a Creek
Michael Moore is accustomed to working solo (or nearly so) in remote places, but this was a very public endeavor. The WHOI marine mammal biologist and veterinarian flew across the…
Read MoreThe Deepest Divers
For years, sperm whales and elephant seals were thought to hold world records for holding their breath under water. But those animals have nothing on beaked whales. Using digital tags…
Read MoreExplorers to Use New Robotic Vehicles to Hunt for Life and Hydrothermal Vents on Arctic Seafloor
Researchers will probe the Gakkel Ridge during expedition that begins on July 1.
Read MoreWhat Does It Take To Break a Whale?
The ship hit the whale with a force that snapped her 14-foot jawbone like a toothpick and left a 4-foot-long crack in her skull. Known as 2150 among scientists, she…
Read MoreWould a Hagfish By Any Other Name Smell as Sweet?
It’s not hard to figure out how hagfish got their name, since they aren’t exactly warm and fuzzy. Slithery, skinny, coated in gooey slime, and often found wriggling and eating…
Read MoreDeep-sea Tubeworms Get Versatile ‘Inside’ Help
Cross sections of the tubeworm Riftia pachyptila. (Courtesy of Enduring Resources for Earth Science Education) When scientists found lush thickets of 6-foot-tall, red-tipped tubeworms on the seafloor in 1977, they…
Read MoreSea Urchin Genome Yields New Understanding of “Chemical Defensome”
The Sea Urchin Genome Sequencing Consortium, a group of 240 researchers from more than 70 institutions in 11 countries, recently announced the sequencing of the California purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus.
Read MoreWhat Other Tales Can Coral Skeletons Tell?
In 2003, we traveled by ship to the New England Seamounts—a chain of extinct, undersea volcanoes about 500 miles off the East Coast of North America—to help collect dead corals…
Read MoreBeaked Whales Perform Extreme Dives to Hunt Deepwater Prey
A study of ten beaked whales of two poorly understood species shows they dive much deeper and longer than reported for any other air-breathing species, a finding of particular interest since beaked whales stranded during naval sonar exercises have been reported to have symptoms of decompression sickness.
Read MoreLegions of Legionella Bacteria
Salty ocean water can be a nuisance. It’s undrinkable and it corrodes nearly everything it touches. But salt water’s inhospitality has always had one benefit: The salt kills microbes, making…
Read MoreNew ‘Eyes’ Size Up Scallop Populations
Part of the fun of fishing is never knowing exactly what might be swimming around beneath you. But that mystery is a major annoyance when it comes to keeping track…
Read MoreIsland Ferries Take on Role of Research Vessels Collecting Data about Nantucket Sound
Ferries that connect Cape Cod and the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket are taking on another role – research vessels. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) biologist Scott Gallager and…
Read MoreLullaby for Larvae
Like many babies, these tiny offspring arrived this spring amid much fanfare and a little trepidation. Never before had scientists witnessed the birth of deep-sea Antarctic corals, which unlike like…
Read MoreOcean Microscope Reveals Surprising Abundance of Life
Towing an underwater video microscope across the Atlantic Ocean, two scientists found unexpected abundances of colonial cyanobacteria that fertilize the oceans with nitrogen. The bacteria may turn out to be…
Read More