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Physical Oceanography


A rare mission north

U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star enters the winter pack ice

Serendipitous science mission aboard the Polar Star provides “once-in-a-lifetime” opportunity to collect critical ocean data below the ice

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Maine’s having a lobster boom. A bust may be coming.

The waters off Maine’s coast are warming, and no one knows what that’s going to mean for the state’s half-billion-dollar-a-year lobster industry—the largest single-species fishery in North America. Some fear that continued warming could cause the lobster population to collapse. To understand what’s happening to the ecosystem of the Gulf of Maine, says Glen Gawarkiewicz, an oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Massachusetts, you have to look beyond it—see how it’s affected by the atmosphere, ocean currents, and rivers that flow into it.

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The ocean science-art connection

Some of the most complex insights in marine science are no match for the communicative power of art. Check out these five recent collaborations between ocean scientists and artists

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Data with a side of sass

Data Dollies

The name “data dollies” was a tongue-in-cheek way of calling attention to the essential yet unglamorous work these mostly young, college-educated women performed while not at sea.

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