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NEWS RELEASES
North Atlantic Ocean productivity has dropped 10 percent during industrial era
Scientists at MIT, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), and elsewhere have found evidence that phytoplankton’s productivity is declining steadily in the North Atlantic, one of the world’s most productive marine basins.
Corals in the Red Sea Offer Long-term View of South Asian Monsoon
Using chemical data from corals in the Red Sea, WHOI scientists reconstructed nearly three centuries of wind data that provided a definitive, natural record of the monsoon’s intensity. The finding, published online March 28 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, show that monsoon winds have indeed increased over the past centuries.
Waters West of Europe Drive Ocean Overturning, Key for Regulating Climate
In the Atlantic MOC, warm, salty, shallow waters are carried northward from the tropics by currents and wind, and then converted into colder, fresher, deep waters that return southward through the Iceland and Irminger basins. In a departure from the prevailing scientific view, the study shows that most of the conversion from warm to cold water – or ‘overturning’ and its month-to-month variability – is occurring in regions between Greenland and Scotland, rather than in the Labrador Sea off Canada, as many past modeling studies have suggested.
The long memory of the Pacific Ocean
Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Harvard University have found that the deep Pacific Ocean lags a few centuries behind in terms of temperature and is still adjusting to the entry into the Little Ice Age. Whereas most of the ocean is responding to modern warming, the deep Pacific may be cooling.
Why Is Sea Level Rising Faster in Some Places Along the U.S. East Coast Than Others?
Sea levels are rising globally from ocean warming and melting of land ice, but the seas aren’t rising at the same rate everywhere. Sea levels have risen significantly higher in some U.S. East Coast regions compared to others. A new study led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) reveals why.
WHOI | OCEANUS
Remembering Tatiana Schlossberg, a voice for the ocean
Environmental journalist and author Tatiana Schlossberg passed away after battling leukemia on December 30, 2025. During the last few years of her life, Tatiana crossed paths with Oceanus magazine, first as a reader and then as a valued contributor. When she had initially expressed interest in writing for the magazine, we welcomed her years of environmental reporting experience, her genuine care about the ocean, and her curiosity. One day in early May, 2023, I reached…
How an MIT-WHOI student used Google Earth to uncover a river–coral reef connection
Google Earth helps researcher decode how rivers sculpt massive breaks in coral reefs
The ocean weather nexus, explained
The vital role of ocean observations in extreme weather forecasting
Harnessing the ocean to power transportation
WHOI scientists are part of a team working to turn seaweed into biofuel
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.