Multimedia Items
Can you spot the eumunid crab?
This vulnerable gorgonian soft coral is the perfect home for the vibrant eunumid crab. See if you can spot it!
Read MoreROV Jason captures underwater video during earthquake
In January and February 2020, scientists on R/V Atlantis explored hydrothermal vents on the Cayman Rise. They used the remotely operated vehicle Jason to get an up-close view of the vents and life around them. The vents lie on a seismically active part of the seafloor known as a mid-ocean ridge. Deep-sea shrimp swarm the vents, feeding on microbes that live on chemicals flowing from the vents. While they were there, a magnitude 4.7 earthquake struck just 100 miles away. Scientists will now be able to study how seismic activity affects hydrothermal vents and the life around them.
Read MoreSentry dives to a biological oasis
WHOI operators deploy the autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Sentry off the coast of Oregon at a site called “Pythias Oasis.”
Read MoreAquaculture pioneer Scott Lindell presents at TEDx Cambridge
Current farming and fishing practices are having devastating impacts on our climate and environment. Scott Lindell, research specialist at The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, reveals how marine aquaculture can sustainably feed the world’s growing population.
Read MoreA tenacious ship pushes forward
R/V Atlantis rides out stormy seas in the North Atlantic during NASA’s Aerosols and Marine Ecosystems Study (NAAMES) cruise to study the processes associated with the world’s largest phytoplankton bloom. This image was shot from the NASA C-130 aircraft during a storm at the end of the expedition. (Photo by John Hair, NASA)
Read MoreOases in Sea Ice Are Essential to Life in Antarctica
This video explains the key physical, biological and ecological processes in oases on the Antarctic icy coast — polynyas. Researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the University of Delaware are trying to unveil crucial connections among the physical and biological components in the polynyas and to understand how the Antarctic ecosystem responds to changes in the large-scale environment.
Read MoreA transient iceberg kingdom meanders through the Southern Ocean
Icebergs drift by the Rothera Station in Antarctica during the final cruise of of the Diapycnal and Isopycnal Mixing Experiment in the Southern Ocean (DIMES) project aboard the British icebreaker RRS James Clark Ross
Read MoreValue Beyond View: The Ocean Twilight Zone
How does the ocean twilight zone benefit life on Earth? The ocean twilight zone helps regulates our climate. Storing two to six billion tons of carbon annually. That’s up to six times the amount of carbon emitted from autos worldwide. Preventing an increase in temperature between 6-11°F. The ocean twilight zone supports a healthy ocean ecosystem. Containing 10 times more fish than the rest of the ocean. Providing food for many other animals in the ocean. The ocean twilight zone could also play an important role in feeding a growing population. We are working to better understand this realm in order to inform sustainable management decisions.
Read MoreOpen Ocean Diving Observations
Watch and learn how blue and black water diving is conducted in the open ocean and what these divers see during the day and during the twilight zone migration at night.
Read MoreTagging and Tracking Wild Squid
Squid are ecologically important marine animals that play a key role in many ocean ecosystems and fisheries. Measuring squid movements, energetics, and habitat use in their natural environment provides important insight into their ecology. However, because the inherent challenges of monitoring these soft-bodied, open-ocean-dwelling organisms, fine-scale observations of their behavior are rare. Bio-logging tags are an increasingly useful way to remotely study squid behavior in their natural environments.
Read More2019 Year in Review
Enjoy this montage of video captured throughout 2019 documenting how WHOI researchers explore the ocean planet to tackle the most pressing questions about our water world and find solutions to benefit society.
Read MoreYellowstone Lake: ROV Yogi
See what the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Yogi helped scientists discover beneath the surface of Yellowstone Lake.
Read MoreMarch of the Penguins
Emperor penguins are some of the most striking and charismatic animals on Earth, but a new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has found that a warming climate may render them extinct by the end of this century. The study, which was part of an international collaboration between scientists, published Nov. 7, 2019, in the journal Global Change Biology.
The fate of the penguins is largely tied to the fate of sea ice, which the animals use as a home base for breeding, feeding and molting, she notes. Emperor penguins tend to build their colonies on ice with extremely specific conditions—it must be locked into the shoreline of the Antarctic continent, but close enough to open seawater to give the birds access to food for themselves and their young. As climate warms, however, that sea ice will gradually disappear, robbing the birds of their habitat, food sources, and ability to raise their chicks.
Jenouvrier and her team conducted the study by combining two existing computer models. The first, a global climate model created by the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), offered projections of where and when sea ice would form under different climate scenarios. The second, a model of the penguin population itself, calculated how colonies might react to changes in that ice habitat.
Read MoreWhale Blow Microbiome
Researchers from WHOI, NOAA Fisheries Southwest Science Center, SR3 Sealife, and the Vancouver Aquarium analyzed whale blow samples collected via drone to identify a core group of bacteria in the respiratory tract of healthy whales.
Read MoreWhale Biopsy Collection
A team gathers skin samples from healthy humpback whales in waters off the Western Antarctic Peninsula. Researchers obtain samples by releasing a biopsy-collecting dart, which bounces off the whales’ skin and into the water. The team then retrieves the floating dart and brings it back to a lab for analysis.
Read MoreGirls in Science Program: bioacoustics
August 2019: Woods Hole Sea Grant has teamed up with Earthwatch Institute on the Girls in Science Fellowship. This fellowship aims to promote diversity and expose young women to a variety of marine careers in STEM. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution Research Specialist Laela Sayigh is the principal investigator working with the fellows analyzing marine mammal bioacoustics data.
Read MoreRelax with the Ocean (playlist)
Sit back and relax with this collection of ocean beauty shots and atmospheric music.
Read MoreWhy is the Greenland Ice Sheet melting faster than ever?
Senior scientist Claudia Cenedese has been studying how glaciers melt for the last 15 years in her fluids laboratory. In 2018 she was a principal investigator on a research cruise in Greenland for the first time. She wants to understand why the Greenland Ice Sheet is melting faster than ever and what happens to the fresh water released into the ocean.
Read MoreTagging Sharks to Study the Twilight Zone
Former WHOI Joint Program graduate student and current University of Washington postdoc Camrin Braun and his team on the charter fishing vessel Machaca managed to tag two porbeagles, a relative of the goblin shark, about 30 miles east of Chatham, Mass. One was a female nearly seven feet long and weighing 270 pounds. A male came alongside the boat while the team was tagging her and, when they were finished, they quickly hooked the curious male, which measured 6.5 feet and weighed 230 pounds.
Both fish are now equipped with fin-mounted SPOT satellite tags, which will report their location each time they surface and can last up to five years. For the Ocean Twilight Zone team, the big predators are an important indicator of where mesopelagic animals are collecting deep below the surface. In short, the predator will go where the prey is.
Read MoreLife at the Edge (video series)
Watch this two-part series following a group of scientists as they explore what makes the shelf break front such a productive and diverse part of the Northwest Atlantic Ocean.
Read MoreHoliday Dive
Happily working through the holidays: Alvin, shown here at the vent site more than 2000 meters (1.25 miles) below the surface being piloted by Alvin program manager Bruce Strickrott.
Read MoreA pop of red in the twilight zone
This bejeweled beauty is a strawberry squid (Histioteuthis reversa), sampled from the ocean twilight zone, a mysterious stratum of the ocean between the sunlit surface layer and extending down to about 1,000 meters (3,300 feet) deep.
Read MoreBrisingids sea stars are the velcro of the deep sea
This festive collection of bright orange filter-feeding brisingid sea stars and scavenging sea urchins were found on a rocky seamount about 700 meters (~2,300 feet) deep in the Phoenix Islands…
Read MoreAn icebreaker pauses
WHOI senior engineer Jeff O’Brien offloads an ice-tethered profiler buoy and winch from the CCGS Louis S. St-Laurent, a Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker, during the 2019 expedition (17th year) of WHOI’s Beaufort Gyre Expedition Exploration Project
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