Multimedia Items

To probe the seafloor, scientists send sound waves down through the ocean and seafloor and record reflected echoes with ocean bottom seismographs and hydrophones trailing behind a ship. […]

Former WHOI Summer Student Fellow and current MIT-WHOI Joint Program graduate student Benjamin Urann (left) and his mentor, WHOI geologist Henry Dick, examine slabs cut from rocks collected during a […]

WHOI engineer Marshall Swartz (right) instructs Louis Clement, a post-doctoral scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, on the technical intricacies of a CTD rosette equipped with a lowered acoustic doppler current profiler (ADCP). […]

Scientists diving in the submersible Alvin in 1991 found themselves in something that looked like a snowstorm on the bottom of the sea. They had arrived soon after a […]

Summer Student Fellow Benjamin Urann (left) and his mentor, geologist Henry Dick, examine slabs cut from igneous rocks collected during a cruise to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge aboard research […]

Throughout June 2013, a team of oceanographers and astrobiologists led by WHOI scientist Chris German will explore one of the deepest mid-ocean ridges, the Mid-Cayman Spreading Center beneath the […]

In 2010, WHOI scientists Adam Soule and Dan Lizarralde searched for evidence that magma from  below the seafloor had penetrated up into the sediments of the Guaymas Basin in […]

Chris Morgan, chief engineer on the research vessel Atlantis, manipulated the remotely operated vehicle Jason at the bottom of the western Caribbean Sea recently while being  guided by members […]

The Deep Submergence Laboratory’s mission is to further human understanding of the deep-sea floor by developing systems for remote, unmanned exploration.  Here MIT/WHOI Joint Program Student Jordan Stanway […]

WHOI able-bodied seaman Raul Martinez and SSSG technician Allison Heater prepare the human-occupied vehicle Alvin for a dive in March 2014. They communicate with the sub’s pilot through a […]

An autonomous underwater vehicle called ABE—for Autonomous Benthic Explorer—systematically “flew” over the seafloor on the volcanic Mid-Atlantic Ridge, midway between Africa and South America, photographing the ocean bottom. […]

A pilot inside the submersible Alvin uses one of the vehicle’s manipulator arms to pick up some unusual geological samples: popping rocks. WHOI scientists collected them in 2016, […]

WHOI geologist Adam Soule looks out of the pilot’s porthole on the human-occupied submersible Alvin during a dive near the mid-Atlantic Ridge in 2016. Soule, who is also the chief […]

Atlantis Bank formed on the seafloor as the Southwest Indian mid-ocean ridge spread apart along a tectonic fault (top). The lower-crust gabbro rock that formed Atlantis Bank was slowly […]

Even while conducting research out in the Pacific Ocean, far from family and friends, it’s still Thanksgiving for U.S. scientists and crew members, and they always look for ways to […]

WHOI offers students a unique Geodynamics Program that fosters interdisciplinary research among faculty, Joint Program students and postdoctoral fellows. Each year a different theme is the focus of […]

Jian Zhao from the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory (LDEO) takes water samples from a CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) rosette on board the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer during a 2015 […]

A scientific instrument called a CTD (conductivity, temperature, depth) is pulled up to the research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer from deep in the Atlantic Ocean. The 2015 expedition led […]