Multimedia Items

Scientists can’t observe magma moving beneath the seafloor, so WHOI geologist Glenn Gaetani makes his own. He subjects tiny capsules of powder (with a composition similar to the rocks in…

WHOI plankton ecologist Heidi Sosik (center, back to the camera) stands on the fantail of the coastal research vessel Tioga and explains ocean observatories and coastal dynamics to reporters participating…

Longtime WHOI employee—now officially a retiree who forgot that he’s not supposed to  be at work—George Tupper works on a conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) water sampler in a Woods Hole workshop. Ocean…

Expedition leader Will Sellers evaluates oncoming ocean swells as the crew prepares to lower the remotely operated vehicle Jason to the Pacific’s Juan de Fuca Ridge. Now in its third…

In between launches of underwater vehicles in July 2007, Peter Winsor and researchers on the Arctic Gakkel Vents Expedition lowered the conductivity-temperature-depth probe in order to look for telltale chemical…

Nathaniel “Nat” Corwin prepares equipment for a chemical analysis of samples in WHOI’s Bigelow Laboratory, circa 1960. Nat was widely regarded for his painstaking analyses of the nutrients in seawater.…

The WHOI-operated research vessel Atlantis passes a quiet night in the halogen shadow of the Bay Bridge between San Francisco and Oakland.(Photo by Lance Wills, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

The coastal research vessels Tioga (left) and Gulf Challenger enjoyed a June 2007 reunion at the WHOI pier. Operated by the University of New Hampshire, Gulf Challenger was designed and…

Porpita porpita—the blue button jelly —is a neustonic species mostly found in the tropics; that is, it floats right neat the surface of the water. The circular disc is made…

In the summer of 2005, a WHOI research team, led by John Kemp and Rick Krishfield, surveyed floes in the Beaufort Sea in search of ice thick enough for deployment…

Norman Vine (from Advanced Habitat Imaging Consortium), Richard Taylor (a fisherman), and WHOI biologist Scott Gallager assemble on the Iselin pier after testing the habitat camera mapping system, or HabCam,…

Biologist Richard “Dick” Backus examines swordfish specimens in his WHOI laboratory, circa 1956. More than five decades later, Backus is still identifying the ocean’s bounty of life as a scientist…

An isopod (Bathynomus giganteus) from the floor of the Gulf of Mexico was caught and carried to the deck of the research vessel Atlantis in the science basket of the…

A technician in the WHOI Oceanographic Systems Laboratory installs the motor controller board for the thrusters in a REMUS 600 vehicle (so numbered for its ability to dive to 600…

The French submersible Cyana is launched into the North Atlantic in 1974 as part of the French-American Mid-Ocean Undersea Study (Project FAMOUS). The submersible—together with the WHOI-operated Alvin and the…

Researchers in the Alvin submersible came across this collapsed pit of lava on the seafloor near the Galapagos Rift. Marine geologists call these shelf-like structures “bathtub rings,” because they record…

A female crab with orange eggs tucked into her abdomen was collected from the deep seafloor  during an Alvin dive in May 2005. Researchers return frequently to places like the…

This top piece of a black smoker chimney was plucked from the southern East Pacific Rise for study by geochemist Meg Tivey and colleagues. Named “Hobbes” by the research team,…