Multimedia Items
Listening in on Whales
Because the Arctic and subarctic regions are seasonally ice-covered, it is impossible to keep track of whales visually throughout the year. So scientists eavesdrop on bowhead whale calls using moorings […]
Read MoreNoah’s Not-so-big Flood
Top: When sea levels were lower 10,000 years ago, the Black Sea was a large freshwater Black Lake. It was dammed off from the salty Mediterranean Sea by the then […]
Read More2010 Haiti Earthquake
The Jan. 12 earthquake in Haiti alleviated built-up stress along one segment (blue gridded area boxes) of the Enriquillo fault, which cuts across the island. But scientists calculated areas (red […]
Read MoreNatural Oil Seeps
This illustration shows the route traveled by oil leaving the subseafloor reservoir as it travels through the water column to the surface and ultimately sinks and falls out in a […]
Read MoreTypes of Estrogen
(Illustration by Amy Caracappa-Qubeck, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Read MoreBacteria and Diatoms
Bacteria and unicellular marine plants called diatoms depend on each other for some essential nutrients, but they also compete for other nutrients. So life gets complicated in the chemical soup […]
Read MoreDoes Sand Move Bacteria at the Beach?
(Illustration by Jack Cook, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Read MoreThe Gateway between the Beach and the Deep Sea
Anything traveling from the shoreline to the ocean and vice versa—water, fish larvae, sand, pollutants—must go through the shallow inner shelf, which connects the beach to the deep ocean. There’s […]
Read MoreIndian Ocean Dipole
The Indian Ocean has its own seesaw behavior, the Indian Ocean Dipole. During a so-called positive phase, warmer-than-usual water temperatures in the western Indian Ocean bring heavy rains to East […]
Read MoreGreenland-Scotland Ridge
The Greenland-Scotland Ridge is a tall undersea ridge that rises within 500 meters of the sea surface and extends from East Greenland to Iceland and across to Scotland. The ridge […]
Read MoreLet the Sunshine In
Single-celled phytoplankton carry out photosynthesis within specialized organelles called chloroplasts. Like factories, the chloroplasts’ photosynthetic machinery requires raw materials and energy—sunlight—to operate. Cells living in the ocean must rapidly adapt […]
Read MoreMarine Microbe Relations
By closely examining the stew of organic carbon compounds dissolved in the ocean, scientists are beginning to reveal previously unknown relationships between specific marine microbes, forged by the materials they […]
Read MoreUXO Marks the Spot
Unexploded ordnance (UXO) from the 1940s and 50s can sometimes resurface in the surf or wash up on beaches at former U.S. military coastal training ranges as the coast erodes. […]
Read MoreAlvin, Phone Home
When the human-occupied submersible Alvin surfaces from a deep-sea mission, specially trained crew members called “swimmers” ride a small boat from the research vessel Atlantis to meet […]
Read MoreBreaking Through
WHOI research engineer Peter Koski prepares an ice tethered profiler for Arctic deployment, working in the science lab of the Coast Guard Cutter Healy. Koski was one of 30 scientists […]
Read MoreMic Drop
Adam Smith, a visiting investigator in WHOI biologist Aran Mooney’s lab, sets up several microphones that will be “dropped” down the side of a cliff and into the burrows […]
Read MoreCreating the Perfect Rip
Rip currents pose a threat to public safety, so officials are interested in ways to predict when and where they form. To study the dynamic and intermittent conditions that create […]
Read MoreFirst Time Out
Postdoctoral investigator Eyal Wurgaft, research assistant Kate Morkeski, and MIT-WHOI Joint Program graduate student Mallory Ringham (left to right) lower the new Channelized Optical System (CHANOS II) instrument into […]
Read MoreA Mighty Current
The cool waters of the Equatorial Undercurrent flow east across the Central Pacific Ocean. After traveling thousands of miles, the current runs into into the Galápagos Islands about 500 miles […]
Read MoreSounds of the Reef
Engineer Rod Catanach sets up a four-channel acoustic recorder to measure coral reef soundscapes—a combination of biological and non-biological sounds produced by everything from fish to waves—during field work […]
Read MoreBleached Corals
Hanny Rivera, a graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program, takes a tissue sample from a bleached coral. When ocean waters warm, corals lose the colorful algae […]
Read MoreReady to Cast Off
Undergraduate students in the WHOI Summer Student Fellowship (SSF) program prepare for a day at sea aboard the research vessel Gulf Challenger in 2018. Each summer SSFs come to […]
Read MoreUnderwater Milestone
The autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Sentry passed a milestone in October 2018, when it completed its 500th dive. The free-swimming, programmable robot was designed and built by WHOI engineers and completed […]
Read MoreThe Tale of the Arizona
This two-dimensional gas chromatogram created by WHOI technician Bob Nelson from samples collected by chemist Chris Reddy tells a very special story. In July 2018, Reddy traveled to Pearl […]
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