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Flying high

Flying high

WHOI/MIT Joint Program student Chris Murphy tests a newly-built SeaBED autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) at the WHOI dock in 2009. The AUV, shown here without its outer “skin,” was developed in…

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Pacific plates

Pacific plates

Stacked plastic plates, called “sandwiches” (left), used as artificial substrates for larvae of vent animals. As part of the research project LADDER (Larval Dispersal on the Deep East Pacific Rise),…

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Charting the Aegean

Charting the Aegean

Valletta, Malta, was among the ports Atlantis (right) visited during “the Med cruise,” a six-month, 1948 cruise to the Mediterranean Sea. The cruise was funded by the Hydrographic Office and…

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It’s a buoy for OOI

It's a buoy for OOI

The first buoy designed for the Ocean Observatory Initiative (OOI) undergoes testing at the dock. Holding the lines to steady the suspended buoy are senior engineer Tim Scholz, left, and…

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Free-living barnacle?

Free-living barnacle?

The USCG Campbell towing Balanus Circa 1948. Balanus was part of the WHOI fleet from 1946 to 1950. It was a rather uncomfortable craft that biologist Gordon Riley said was…

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Single file line

Single file line

For all its ice, cold, and six months of darkness, the oceans around Antarctica are teeming with life. Penguins, whales, and seals inhabit the area where sea ice meets open…

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Piecing together the past

Piecing together the past

Deep-sea archaeologist Brendan Foley and Matt Grund, of the Applied Ocean Physics & Engineering department, ready a SeaBED Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) for testing off the R/V Tioga in 2005.…

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Trojan horses

Trojan horses

A single-celled organism has eaten bacteria, which are easily visible because they were treated with green dye. Some bacteria can live within organisms, waiting to be released back into the…

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Rigging up

Rigging up

Photographer Dave Owen rigging up his camera system on deck of Atlantis. Owen conducted extensive deep-sea camera operations on many expeditions, including three cruises between 1972 and 1974 near the…

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Exploring ocean acidification

Exploring ocean acidification

Postdoctoral Investigator Sarah Cooley (right), of the Marine Chemistry & Geochemistry department, leads a group of teachers through a classroom laboratory exercise exploring ocean acidification and its effects on marine…

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Mowing the lawn

Mowing the lawn

The WHOI-operated deep-sea vehicle ABE systematically tracked over the seafloor on the volcanic Mid-Atlantic Ridge, midway between Africa and South America, photographing the ocean bottom. Some 3,000 overlapping photos were…

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Changing landscape

Changing landscape

Emperor penguins, which delighted audiences of the Academy Award-winning documentary March of the Penguins, could be sliding on the path toward extinction—the victims of climate change, according to a study…

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Please pass the saline

Please pass the saline

The principal developers of the salinometer —Karl Schleicher, right, and Alvin Bradshaw— are at work with their first model, in the mid-1950s, in the main lab of the research vessel…

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Into the sunset

Into the sunset

A beautiful, winter sunset casts an amber glow on the R/V Oceanus docked at the WHOI pier in January 2010. Oceanus is the North Atlantic workhorse of the WHOI-UNOLS fleet,…

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Ice drilling

Ice drilling

Over the past two years, WHOI marine biogeochemist Mak Saito and his colleagues at J.C. Venter Institute have been studying life at the bottom of the food chain in Antarctica.…

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Analyzing ancient sediments

Analyzing ancient sediments

Research Assistant Skye Moret-Ferguson of the Geology & Geophysics department prepares a core for analysis in the X-ray fluorescence (XRF) core scanner. The scanner, which produces nondestructive, high-resolution elemental analysis,…

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Deep diver

Deep diver

The new deep-sea vehicle Nereus successfully reached the deepest part of the ocean — the Mariana Trench in the western Pacific Ocean— on May 31, 2009. First conceived in 2000…

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Growing marine algae

Growing marine algae

In experimental tanks at WHOI, guest student Tyler Goepfert grows different species of marine algae to test which might be best suited for harvesting and converting into biofuels. Goepfert is…

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Bowhead hotspot

Bowhead hotspot

Stephen R. Okkonen of the Institute of Marine Science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Guest Investigator Robert Campbell from the University of Rhode Island deploy a conductivity/temperature/depth (CTD)…

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Steaming away

Steaming away

The R/V Knorr steams away from the coast of Cape Dyer, Baffin Island—the largest island in Canada—in October 2009. The ship was in the area to recover a series of…

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Life on (and under) the ice

Life on (and under) the ice

WHOI marine biogeochemist Mak Saito snapped this image of two Emperor penguins while working in Antarctica in November 2009. Over the past two years, Saito and his colleagues have shared…

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Dating corals

Dating corals

MIT/WHOI Joint Program Student Andrea Burke of the Geology & Geophysics department cuts pieces of a deep-sea coral (Desmophyllum dianthus) collected from about 1000 meters depth in the Drake Passage.…

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Extracting DNA

Extracting DNA

Summer Student Fellow Erica Hildebrand of Connecticut College spent her summer working with WHOI biologist Stefan Sievert on a project to assess the microbial community composition of five distinct low-temperature…

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Anchors away

Anchors away

R/V Knorr bosun Pete Liarikos and University of Washington engineer Eric Boget move a mooring anchor into position for deployment as part of the Arctic Gateways program. The anchors, which…

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