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Marine Chemistry & Geochemistry


Underneath and Overlooked: Groundwater

Underneath and Overlooked: Groundwater

Matt Charette has been pulling off the sheetrock in Earth’s basement to reveal a hidden plumbing system that pumps water into the ocean. Rivers carry most of the rain that…

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A ‘B-12 Shot’ for Marine Algae?

Studying algal cultures and seawater samples from the Southern Ocean off Antarctica, a team of researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the J. Craig Venter Institute have revealed a key cog in the biochemical machinery that allows marine algae at the base of the oceanic food chain to thrive. They have discovered a previously unknown protein in algae that grabs an essential but scarce nutrient out of seawater, vitamin B12.

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Lessons from the 2011 Japan Quake

When the ground in Japan started shaking on March 11, 2011, the Japanese, who are well accustomed to earthquakes, knew this time was different. They weren’t surprised—the fault that ruptured…

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Marine Microbes vs. Cystic Fibrosis

Marine Microbes vs. Cystic Fibrosis

Microbes that grow in the ocean could one day help doctors combat the deadly disease cystic fibrosis (CF), said Tracy Mincer, a microbiologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Mincer studies…

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Tracking Toxic Chemicals in Oil Spills

Tracking Toxic Chemicals in Oil Spills

I don’t do San Francisco like most people. I skip the cable cars, Lombard Street, Alcatraz, and the fine restaurants and museums. Soon after my flight arrives, I drive my…

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On the Trail of Mercury in the Ocean

On the Trail of Mercury in the Ocean

I returned from Hawai’i in mid-December with 700 bottles of seawater. The bottles hold what I hope are solutions to an abiding mystery. In the middle of the ocean, waters…

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Searching for Life on the Seafloor

Searching for Life on the Seafloor

Smaller than a fingernail, like bits of downy red feathers, baby tubeworms cling to a vertical wall towering alongside the submersible Alvin 2,500 meters beneath the sea in 2006. Repaved…

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The Ocean’s Tiny Chemists

The Ocean's Tiny Chemists

Once as I was flying cross-country over the middle of the United States, the woman in the seat next to me remarked: “You know, in Nebraska when there’s a game…

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Every Chromatogram Tells a Story

Every Chromatogram Tells a Story

Where is this mountainous landscape? Actually, that’s the wrong question. It’s a landscape, all right, but it’s a chemical landscape: You’re looking at oil from the Deepwater Horizon spill. Each…

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Psychotherapy for Plankton

Psychotherapy for Plankton

The scene: A diatom is out of its oceanic habitat and on a couch, talking to a therapist. The diatom is stressed. It can’t ever seem to get enough nutrients.…

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Up From the Seafloor Came a Bubbling Brew

Up From the Seafloor Came a Bubbling Brew

Eleven days after the explosion at the Deepwater Horizon oil rig on April 20, 2010, representatives from BP called Andy Bowen at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). “It had become…

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A Small Sip from a Big Gusher

A Small Sip from a Big Gusher

How much oil gushed out of the Deepwater Horizon well and into the Gulf of Mexico? For all stakeholders in the oil spill, that is a critical starting point for…

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Microbes Hitch Rides on Plastics in the Sea

Microbes Hitch Rides on Plastics in the Sea

This research was supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and the International Census of Marine Microbes initiative.

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How Does Toxic Mercury Get into Fish?

How Does Toxic Mercury Get into Fish?

Most everyone has heard by now that we should limit our consumption of certain fish because they accumulate high levels of toxic mercury. But nobody—not even scientists—knows how that toxic…

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Plastic Particles Permeate the Atlantic

Plastic Particles Permeate the Atlantic

Recent reports of a “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” in the subtropical waters of the North Pacific Ocean described a floating island as large as Texas—so thick that one could potentially…

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