Image

Hot Water

Data from a ship traveling the “Oleander Line” between New York and Bermuda and from buoys revealed unusually high ocean temperatures (red) in spring and summer of 2012 along the U.S. East Coast. Fishermen saw species off Maine that are normally found farther south. WHOI researchers Ke Chen, Glen Gawarkiewicz, and Steven Lentz concluded that a shift in the Jet Stream in 2011-2012 prevented coastal waters from losing heat, as they usually do in winter. Gawarkiewicz and Frank Bahr recently won a MacArthur Foundation award to train fishermen to gather data to help understand how ocean changes affect marine resources. (Illustration by Eric S. Taylor and Ke Chen, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)