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NEWS RELEASES
WHOI advancing a seaweed solution to develop new kelp strains
A leader in ocean science, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is embarking on a study of how new seaweed strains could further enhance the burgeoning seaweed industry and offer solutions to some of the world’s pressing challenges. This research is funded in part by World Wildlife Fund (WWF) with support from the Bezos Earth Fund.
Emperor penguins, recommended as threatened species under Endangered Species Act
Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) announced a proposal to list the emperor penguin as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.
New Study Finds Emperor Penguins Increasingly Threatened by Climate Change
A new study published today in Global Change Biology provides valuable new data that highlights how species extinction risk is accelerating due to rapid climate change and an increase in extreme climate events, such as glacial calving and sea ice loss.
Review Evaluates the Evidence for an Intensifying Indian Ocean Water Cycle
The Indian Ocean has been warming much more than other ocean basins over the last 50-60 years. While temperature changes basin-wide can be unequivocally attributed to human-induced climate change, it is difficult to assess whether contemporary heat and freshwater changes in the Indian Ocean since 1980 represent an anthropogenically-forced transformation of the hydrological cycle. What complicates the assessment is factoring in natural variations, regional-scale trends, a short observational record, climate model uncertainties, and the ocean…
Icebergs drifting from Canada to Southern Florida
A newly developed iceberg computer model helped the researchers understand the timing and circulation of meltwater and icebergs through the global oceans during glacial periods, which is crucial for deciphering how past changes in high-latitude freshwater forcing influenced shifts in climate.
WHOI | OCEANUS
Ships in the Strait of Hormuz are becoming invasive species breeding grounds
Beneath the waterline of every ship stalled in the Persian Gulf, a thriving underwater city takes shape—barnacles, algae, mussels, sea squirts. Some of those hitchhikers could reach coastlines they’d never find on their own.
Is the ocean carbon sink at risk of faltering?
WHOI scientists explain how the ocean mitigates climate change—and could be compromised by it
The world’s most abundant fish once thrived in an extreme climate
Fossilized teeth show bristlemouth fish evolved during one of the ocean’s hottest periods
Luxury cruises with a side of climate science
A new partnership gives scientists rare access to remote Antarctic glaciers—and a new way to engage the public
Publications
IN THE NEWS - RESEARCH HIGLIGHTS
Study offers first definitive proof that Gulf Stream has weakened
“New research from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution offers the first conclusive evidence that the Gulf Stream has weakened. The powerful ocean current off the East Coast influences regional weather, climate and fisheries, and the finding could have significant implications both for New England and the global climate.”
What Happens to Marine Life When There Isn’t Enough Oxygen?
In September of 2017, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution postdoctoral scholar Maggie Johnson was conducting an experiment with a colleague in Bocas del Toro off the…
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.