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Icebergs drifting from Canada to Southern Florida

A newly developed iceberg computer model helped the researchers understand the timing and circulation of meltwater and icebergs through the global oceans during glacial periods, which is crucial for deciphering how past changes in high-latitude freshwater forcing influenced shifts in climate. 

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Some Forams Could Thrive with Climate Change, Metabolism Study Finds

Oceanic deoxygenation is increasingly affecting marine ecosystems. A new paper that examines two foram species found that they demonstrated great metabolic versatility to flourish in hypoxic and anoxic sediments where there is little or no dissolved oxygen, inferring that the forams’ contribution to the marine ecosystem will increase with the expansion of oxygen-depleted habitats.

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A new ocean soundscape

Combining his passions for marine chemistry and music, an MIT-WHOI Joint Program student converts data into songs that reveal the chemical nuances of the ocean.

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From Mars to the deep

Navigation technology that helped NASA’s Perseverance rover land safely on Mars could guide robots in another unexplored terrain that’s much closer to home: the deepest trenches of the ocean.

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Plate Tectonics Fuels a Vast Underground Ecosystem

The subsurface is among Earth’s largest biomes, but the extent to which microbial communities vary across tectonic plate boundaries or interact with subduction-scale geological processes remains unknown. In a recently published study, scientists compare bacterial community composition with deep-subsurface geochemistry from 21 hot springs across the Costa Rican convergent margin.

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Racing an undersea volcano

A 3D rendering of the East Pacific Rise

Using AUV Sentry to make a high-resolution, near-bottom, seafloor map before the next volcanic eruption at the East Pacific Rise

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Microbial Methane – New Fuel for Ocean Robots?

Methane seep

Researchers are developing on an energy harvesting platform that converts marine methane to electricity. The system could be an answer to power-hungry robots that are being asked to explore increasingly larger swaths of the ocean.

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The Search for Life

WHOI researchers featured in episode of news program Full Measure February 17, 2021 This week, NASA’s Perseverance Rover lands on Mars to continue the search for life on the Red…

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Could listening to the deep sea help save it?

A recent New York Times article about sound in the deep ocean briefly mentions the work by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) acoustic scientist Ying-Tsong “YT” Lin and his work developing an “acoustic telescope.”

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