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Ready for a Big Splash

Ready for a Big Splash

John Kemp, head of the WHOI Mooring Operations & Engineering Group, directs the deployment of a surface mooring from the research vessel Neil Armstrong. Common moorings, which use anchors and…

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Saluting the Captain

Saluting the Captain

ROV Jason team members Tito Collasius (in shorts), Scott McCue (right) and Chris Judge (left) fire three shots from a cannon to honor retiring Captain A.D. Colburn’s last departure from…

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A Parade of Ships

A Parade of Ships

A U.S. Navy Yard Patrol (YP) boat passes the Navy-owned, WHOI-operated R/V Neil Armstrong as it prepares to dock during the Fleet Week Parade of Ships in NYC last May.…

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A-Frame Job

A-Frame Job

The research vessel Atlantis is a sophisticated, general-purpose platform in its own right, but it is also specially outfitted to be the support vessel for the submersible Alvin. From 2011 to…

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Breaking the Surface

Breaking the Surface

A humpback whale surfaces in the icy water off Antarctica, near the U.S. icebreaker Lawrence M. Gould (left). Tyler Rohr, a graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography,…

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The Cable Guy

The Cable Guy

The remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Jason has had a storied career: it has located hydrothermal vent fields, captured footage of the deepest explosive erupting volcano, and rescued seismic equipment encased…

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I See a Purple Sea Cucumber

I See a Purple Sea Cucumber

A purple elasipodida holothurian crawls on the seafloor more than 3,000 feet beneath the ocean surface at the base of a seamount off the Galápagos Islands. In August 2015, an…

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Control Group

Control Group

Inside the control van for the remotely operated vehicle Kraken-2, operators Mike McKee (left) and Dennis Arbige (right) from the University of Connecticut Northeast Underwater Research, Technology & Education Center (NURTEC)…

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A Full Deck

A Full Deck

The research vessel Neil Armstrong heads to the Ocean Observatories Initiative Coastal Pioneer Array about 90 miles south of Martha’s Vineyard. Every six months, WHOI engineers, scientists, and crew travel…

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Chemical Evidence

Chemical Evidence

WHOI research assistant Paul Henderson watches over a water sampling station in the Northwest Territories, Canada. MIT-WHOI Joint Program student Lauren Kipp led the 2016 expedition to study processes on…

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A Break in the Action

A Break in the Action

Bosun Pete Liarikos raises a fist to stop the action during the deployment of a multifunction node (MFN) from the deck of the research vessel Neil Armstrong. The gray metal…

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Tracking Toxic Invaders

Tracking Toxic Invaders

Clinging jellyfish such as this from the coastal ocean near Vladivostok, Russia, are known for toxic stings that cause a wide range of symptoms—severe pain, difficulty breathing, and even hallucinations.…

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Homing in on Reef Homes

Homing in on Reef Homes

Justin Suca holds a translucent young mantis shrimp off the Caribbean island of St. John where he does field work. Suca, a graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in…

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Call of the Wild

Call of the Wild

An Atlantic white-sided dolphin jumps alongside the research vessel Neil Armstrong off the Massachusetts coast. These animals spend most of their lives in deep waters but are known to strand off…

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24/7 Science at Sea

24/7 Science at Sea

This buoy is part of a Coastal Surface Mooring, one of the ten scientific moorings in the Coastal Pioneer Array of the Ocean Observatories Initiative. Wind turbines and solar panels…

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Lunge Feeding

Lunge Feeding

Seagulls circle above as a humpback whale opens its mouth wide to take a great gulp of food-filled water, a behavior known as lunge feeding. The whale will filter the…

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Tracking Fukushima Radioactivity

Tracking Fukushima Radioactivity

In the weeks after the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster in 2011, WHOI geochemist Ken Buesseler organized an expedition with scientists from different fields and institutions to investigate radioisotopes from…

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88 Years Young

88 Years Young

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution was founded on this date in 1930, following the recommendations of a National Academy of Sciences Committee on Oceanography. The chairman of the committee, Frank…

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Digging for Radioactivity

Digging for Radioactivity

Former WHOI post-doctoral scientist Virginie Sanial sampled groundwater beneath beaches in Japan to look for radioactive cesium-137 from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear plant accident. To her surprise, she and colleagues found…

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Bleached Coral

Bleached Coral

A coral at Dongsha Atoll in the South China Sea shows the effects of “bleaching.” The phenomenon occurs when ocean temperatures rise and the colorful symbiotic algae hosted in coral tissue…

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Long Haul

Long Haul

Crabs and shrimp investigate a cast-steel anchor for a mooring resting 125 meters below the surface at the Pioneer Array, an ocean observatory off the Massachusetts coast operated by WHOI and…

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Snap Chatter

Snap Chatter

Snapping shrimp usually look something like tiny lobsters, with one front claw much larger than the other. They use their supersized appendage to make a characteristic snapping sound, which may…

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Worth the Wade

Worth the Wade

Woods Hole Sea Grant Extension Agent Joshua Reitsma collects shellfish samples in Cape Cod’s Barnstable Harbor as part of a study to determine how much nitrogen they incorporate into their…

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Pioneer Turnaround

Twice each year, scientists, engineers, and technicians make three short (7-10 day) trips on the research vessel Neil Armstrong to service and replace moorings that make up the Ocean Observatories…

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