Feature on News & Insight
Environmental projects to watch on Cape Cod
Endangered Whales Get Lifeline From High-Tech Lobster Traps
Submersible Technology Advances At Speed At WHOI
Two Kinds of Warm Core Rings Emanate From the Gulf Stream
Warm core rings are isolated ocean eddies that hold warm and salty water of the Gulf Stream and Sargasso Sea. As they travel long distances, warm core rings play very important roles in transporting heat, salt, dissolved and undissolved constituents of the ocean.
Read MoreHow eDNA Might Transform the Search for Missing Service Members
Woods Hole scientists exploring what’s inside the ocean’s ‘twilight zone’
The story of the ocean is one of depths and mysteries as vast as space, where more is unknown than understood. This story specifically, though, is about a place where light and shadow meet, and the layer in which creatures are straight out of your imagination. The next stop on our journey is the ocean twilight zone.
Read MoreWhere food is scarce, ocean predators find snacks in swirling eddies
One of the last places you want to be hungry out on the open ocean is the North Pacific Subtropical Gyre. Being home to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch is just one factor. A gyre is a large system of rotating currents ocean currents. There are five of major ocean gyres, where the ocean churns up eddies (smaller and more temporary loops of swirling water), whirlpools, and deep ocean currents. Even without trash islands, gyres are typically nutrient poor (ie not a lot of snacks), yet help sustain some of the ocean’s top predator fish.
Read MoreRevealing 99% of the ocean floor: WHOI’s submersible Alvin reaches new depths
The adage that nearly three-quarters of the ocean floor is unreachable is no longer true. On July 21, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s human-occupied submersible Alvin reached a record-breaking depth of 6,453 meters — or 4 miles — in the Puerto Rico Trench north of San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Read MoreGreatest Migration on Earth Happens under Darkness Every Day
Every evening around the world trillions of zooplankton, many smaller than a grain of rice, hover hundreds of feet below the surface of the sea, waiting for their signal. Scientists long considered these tiny animals to be drifters, passive specks suspended in the ocean, moved by the whims of tides and currents.
Read MoreIt Looks Awkward, but This Fish Has a Secret Glow
What color is a lumpfish? The answer is more complicated than you might expect. These bumpy, bottom-dwelling fish, found in the North Atlantic and parts of the Arctic Ocean, come in a variety of colors, which change as the fish age. However, scientists think they have pinned down the fish’s true color — fluorescent green.
Read MoreTurning the tide against climate change
Call of the deep
Whale sharks are one of a select group of large marine animals that scientists like Thorrold, of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, have signed up as ocean-going research assistants.
Read MoreRobotic buoys developed to keep Atlantic right whales safe
A lab at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution developed the technology, which uses buoys and underwater gliders to record whale sounds in near real time.
Read MoreThis robot lives with an Antarctica penguin colony, monitoring their every move
The project, funded by the independent nonprofit Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, focuses on emperor penguins’ place on the food chain.
Read MoreYour Take-Out Coffee Cup May Shed Trillions of Plastic ‘Nanoparticles’
New research shows that paper cup of joe you grab off the coffeehouse counter contains another ingredient, and it’s one you might not care for — trillions of tiny plastic particles that leach into your hot java from the cup’s plastic lining. “I read that sentence and go, well, is it time for us to re-evaluate the guidelines?” said Christopher Reddy, a senior scientist of marine chemistry and geochemistry with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, Mass.
Read MoreA robot lives in this Antarctic penguin colony. It’s trying to save them
Thousands of emperor penguins cluster on the ice of Atka Bay in Antarctica, mostly unaware that an interloper lives among them. Slightly shorter than the average adult emperor, the 3-foot-tall (1-meter-tall) autonomous robot sits silently within the colony, nondescript compared with humans who sometimes emerge from a nearby research station. The birds occasionally notice ECHO, an unmanned and remote-controlled ground vehicle, because “they exhibit curiosity to everything that they don’t know,” said Dan Zitterbart, associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.
Read MoreIs This New England’s Oldest Known English Shipwreck?
A nearly 160-year-old mystery just got closer to being solved. The remains of a centuries-old shipwreck stowed at a museum in Massachusetts, may be the remains of a vessel that ran aground nearly 400 years ago, researchers recently reported in the Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. In 2018, Calvin Mires, a museum trustee, maritime archaeologist and researcher with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, teamed with Aoife Daly, a dendrochronologist (tree ring researcher), and Fred Hocker, an expert on 17th-century ship construction, to conduct an in-depth study of the wreck.
Read MoreAntarctica’s Conger ice shelf collapses in most significant loss since early 2000s
The Conger ice shelf in Antarctica has collapsed, according to satellite data, in what scientists say is the most significant collapse there in nearly 20 years. While the ice shelf is relatively small — it is roughly the size of Rome — Dr. Catherine Colello Walker said the event, which came in a week with unusually high temperatures, could be a harbinger for more collapses to come.
Read MoreProtecting whale superhighways
Oceanic migratory routes that are essential to whale survival, and corridors of major human disruption. Featuring: Michael J. Moore, veterinary scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Author of We Are All Whalers: The Plight of Whales and Our Responsibility.
Read MoreWhen it comes to sucking up carbon emissions, ‘the ocean has been forgiving.’ That might not last
Carbon dioxide levels in our atmosphere “would jump by nearly 50 percent” without the many ecological services the twilight zone provides, according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution based on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.
Read MoreListen: Scientists Are Recording Ocean Sounds to Spot New Species
As oceans warm, scientists aim to catalog underwater soundscapes before ecosystems change.
Read MoreHow about 10% of the oil from Deepwater Horizon oil spill was eaten by the sun
A recent study carried out by Collin Ward and Danielle Haas Freeman from the Department of Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has closed some of the knowledge gap by reconciling interactions between surface oil and sunlight. Their findings were published in the journal Science Advances.
Read MoreWarming Trends: Extracting Data From Pictures, Paying Attention to the ‘Twilight Zone,’ and Making Climate Change Movies With Edge
The ocean twilight zone exists between the sunlit waters at the surface and the permanently dark waters of the deep sea. Here, carbon is pumped from the surface waters into the deep sea by sinking and mixing, or in the bellies of deep sea creatures that come up to the twilight zone at night to feed on carbon-rich phytoplankton. These processes capture an estimated 2 to 6 billion tons of carbon annually, according to the report from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which outlines the twilight zone’s role in climate change.
Read MoreRight whales giving birth a cause for excitement, but not enough to save endangered species
Difficulty in finding food is also thought to be a reason for the drop in calves, from a high of 39 in the 2008-2009 season to zero in 2018. The intervals between calving for many females have grown longer, leading researchers such as veterinarian Michael Moore at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to conclude female whales need to be fat and well fed to get pregnant and nurse a calf.
Read More