Skip to content

Multimedia Items


A-coring We Will Go

A-coring We Will Go

Long metal tubes protrude from the bow and stern of a research boat headed toward a blue hole off Long Island in the Bahamas. Scientists lower the tubes to the…

Read More

Perils of Polar Research

Perils of Polar Research

Field safety personnel keep a careful eye on potentially dangerous macrofauna (also known as penguins) while WHOI biologist Sam Laney (far right) collects plankton samples at the edge of sea…

Read More

Eroding Away

Eroding Away

Scientists have long known that mountain ranges can draw carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere: As rocks are exposed to the air by erosion, minerals chemically react with carbon dioxide…

Read More

At the Rainbow’s End

At the Rainbow’s End

No pot of gold, but a large colony of king penguins can be found at the end of this rainbow. Breeding pairs and individuals form very large and dense colonies…

Read More

Illuminating Research

Illuminating Research

A research team works by headlamps to extract sediments from tubes used to core the bottom of Yellowstone Lake. WHOI scientist Rob Sohn, who has explored hydrothermal vents on the…

Read More

Remote Exploration

Remote Exploration

WHOI senior engineer Matt Heintz speaks with WHOI Trustees and Corporation members about major upgrades to the remotely operated deep-sea vehicle Jason. The $2.4 million upgrades were funded by the National…

Read More

Slow and Steady

Slow and Steady

Pete Liarikos, bosun on the research vessel Neil Armstrong, signals to another crew member operating the ship’s crane to raise the crane’s load. Slowly. On the line are a pair…

Read More

What are you doing here?

What are you doing here?

A curious Adélie penguin checks out a modified commercial quadcopter drone that researchers used along with estimations from ground counts to complete the first census of the species in the…

Read More

Science in Rough Seas

Science in Rough Seas

Conditions can get a little rough off the coast of North Carolina in January, but that didn’t stop WHOI physical oceanographer Glen Gawarkiewicz and his team. Using an instrument called a…

Read More

Taking the Stage

Taking the Stage

Biologist Heidi Sosik briefed WHOI volunteers last spring on the new NSF-funded Long-term Ecological Research site that she helped establish off the Northeast U.S. coast. Tonight, Sosik will present at…

Read More

Bad to the Bone

Bad to the Bone

Look closely at this rib from a sperm whale found dead on a Nantucket Beach in 2002, and you can see a lesion—pits on the joint surface and a large…

Read More

Tagging Ocean Giants

Tagging Ocean Giants

WHOI researcher and engineer Alex Bocconcelli searched for endangered blue whales in southern Chile’s Corcovado Bay this past winter. To track whales’ diving behavior, his team attached temporary suction-cup tags equipped…

Read More

Fast “Flyer”

Fast “Flyer”

The NSF-funded Ocean Observatories Initiative Pioneer Array includes two types of observing systems: fixed moorings and mobile vehicles, such as this REMUS 600. With its powerful built-in propulsion system, a…

Read More

A Mythic Ocean Instrument

A Mythic Ocean Instrument

WHOI scientist Benjamin Van Mooy (right) and MIT-WHOI Joint Program graduate student Jamie Collins flank the proof-of-concept version of an instrument called PHORCYS. Van Mooy co-developed the device to make…

Read More

Playing Tag with Sharks

Playing Tag with Sharks

Whale sharks and other large fish such as rays, tuna, and swordfish roam our oceans, but we know remarkably little about them. That impedes our ability to understand their roles…

Read More

Probing the Seafloor with Sound

Probing the Seafloor with Sound

To probe the seafloor, scientists send sound waves down through the ocean and seafloor and record reflected echoes with ocean bottom seismographs and hydrophones trailing behind a ship. The time…

Read More

Helping Hand

Helping Hand

The new Northeast Shelf Long-term Ecological Research (NES-LTER) site south of Cape Cod connects two other existing study sites: the Martha’s Vineyard Coastal Observatory and the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI)…

Read More

Pollution Fighters?

Pollution Fighters?

Researchers from WHOI Sea Grant and the Cape Cod Cooperative Extension analyzed wild and farmed oysters and quahogs to see how much nitrogen the shellfish can store in their shells…

Read More

Little Gems

Little Gems

WHOI biologist Scott Lindell examines a container of gametophytes, germinal kelp plants, being prepared for use in a combined aquaculture experiment he is conducting. In six months, the millimeter-long young…

Read More

Preparing for Recovery

Preparing for Recovery

Raymond Graham (right, in lifeboat) gets into position to join Ben Pietro (far right) on the surface buoy of a scientific mooring to prepare it for recovery after its 14-month…

Read More

Changing Landscape

Changing Landscape

Tuktoyaktuk means “Land of the Caribou” in the Inuvialuit language, which explains the sculpture in the foreground, but the landscape of the Northwest Territories, Canada, is also of interest for…

Read More

Getting in Line

Getting in Line

WHOI engineer Christopher Griner (facing camera) and Chris Mannka, a crewmember of the research vessel Neil Armstrong, wound more than 12 kilometers (over 7 miles) of high-strength synthetic rope prior…

Read More

Eight Arms, No Ears

Eight Arms, No Ears

It’s a bird, it’s a plane … no, it’s a cirrate octopus that was spotted swimming past the viewport of the human-occupied deep-sea submersible Alvin in 1976. Cirrate octopuses have…

Read More

Hot Spots on the River

Hot Spots on the River

WHOI scientists used a drone equipped with a thermal imaging sensor to create this image (inset) of a section of the Coonamessett River watershed in Falmouth, Mass. The thermal image…

Read More