Research Highlight
Life at Rock Bottom
This digital photo essay brings you the forms, figures, and facts of life more than a mile and half deep
Read MoreReview Evaluates the Evidence for an Intensifying Indian Ocean Water Cycle
Report Calls for Better Integration of Observations, Models, and Paleo Proxies The Indian Ocean has been warming much more than other ocean basins over the last 50-60 years. While temperature…
Read MoreStudy Examines the Role of Deep-Sea Microbial Predators at Hydrothermal Vents
Researchers Emphasize the Need for Baseline Information of Microbial Food Webs The hydrothermal vent fluids from the Gorda Ridge spreading center in the northeast Pacific Ocean create a biological hub…
Read MoreFalling in love with deep-sea parasites
At hydrothermal vents there are body-snatchers, intestinal hitchhikers, and chest-bursters, but something about them is still alluring to Lauren Dykman
Read MoreSharks and the ocean’s twilight zone: Some female great white sharks can deep dive for hours
Much of the shark focus around the Cape is on great whites roaming close to the shoreline as they prowl for seals, but researchers are finding out that several sharks…
Read MoreShark Week 2021: Sharks and the Ocean’s Twilight Zone
How large marine predators use the twilight zone to thrive, and survive Woods Hole, MA (July 11, 2021) — Sharks are some of the largest fish in the ocean, known…
Read MoreRobot Dives 3,000 Feet to Film Creatures in Mid-Ocean ‘Twilight Zone’
Bioluminescent creatures and others inhabiting the dark depths 3,000 feet below the surface in the mid-ocean “twilight zone” — beyond the reach of sunlight — are now being documented by a…
Read MoreNew glider design aims to expand access to ocean science
Gliders are vehicles vital to collecting oceanographic data, but not accessible to everyone in the ocean community. A team of WHOI engineers want to change that
Read MoreUnderwater robot offers new insight into mid-ocean “twilight zone”
Woods Hole, MA (June 16, 2021) — An innovative underwater robot known as Mesobot is providing researchers with deeper insight into the vast mid-ocean region known as the “twilight zone.”…
Read MoreMaine’s having a lobster boom. A bust may be coming.
The waters off Maine’s coast are warming, and no one knows what that’s going to mean for the state’s half-billion-dollar-a-year lobster industry—the largest single-species fishery in North America. Some fear that continued warming could cause the lobster population to collapse. To understand what’s happening to the ecosystem of the Gulf of Maine, says Glen Gawarkiewicz, an oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, in Massachusetts, you have to look beyond it—see how it’s affected by the atmosphere, ocean currents, and rivers that flow into it.
Read MoreCritically Endangered North Atlantic Right Whales Getting Smaller, New Research Finds
A report out this week in Current Biology reveal that critically endangered North Atlantic right whales are up to three feet shorter than 40 years ago. This startling conclusion reinforces what scientists have suspected: even when entanglements do not lead directly to the death of North Atlantic right whales, they can have lasting effects on the imperiled population that may now number less than 400 animals. Further, females that are entangled while nursing produce smaller calves.
Read MoreScience RoCS Initiative responds to need for increased ocean monitoring
Commercial ships are helping oceanographers deploy robotic Argo floats to keep an eye on hard-to-reach parts of the ocean
Read MoreThe ocean science-art connection
Some of the most complex insights in marine science are no match for the communicative power of art. Check out these five recent collaborations between ocean scientists and artists
Read MorePapers Explore Massive Plankton Blooms with Very Different Ecosystem Impacts
Two papers explore the distribution and abundance of plankton and what conditions lead to big plankton blooms with vastly different potential impacts on the ecosystem.
Read MoreWoods Hole Oceanographic Institution Wants Everyone to “Keep it Weird”
Campaign raises awareness of the ocean twilight zone by celebrating the “weird” in all of us Woods Hole, Mass. (May 27, 2021) — Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) wants to…
Read MoreRare Drone video shows critically endangered North Atlantic right whales
May 10, 2021 During a joint research trip on February 28 in Cape Cod Bay, Mass., WHOI whale trauma specialist Michael Moore, National Geographic photographer Brian Skerry, and scientists…
Read MoreNorthern Star Coral Study Could Help Protect Tropical Corals
Worldwide, coral reefs are in crisis. Researchers at WHOI and Roger Williams University are finding that studying the recovery of this local New England species from a laboratory induced stressor could help better understand how to protect endangered tropical corals around the world.
Read MoreFive extreme places to do ocean research
Whether they’re under the ice at the furthest poles or hovering above the ocean’s deepest volcanoes, these researchers get the job done.
Read MoreClimate Change Can Destabilize the Global Soil Carbon Reservoir, New Study Finds
The vast reservoir of carbon that is stored in soils probably is more sensitive to destabilization from climate change than has previously been assumed, according to a new study by…
Read MoreStudy Finds that Offshore Pile Driving Noise Alters Feeding Behaviors of Longfin Squid
Squid less likely to capture killifish prey; more likely to miss attacks and abandoned pursuit of prey during pile driving noise.
Read MoreWHOI scientists on warming atmosphere, weaker Gulf Stream
The warming atmosphere is causing an arm of the powerful Gulf Stream to weaken, some scientists fear
Read More‘Ropeless’ Lobster Fishing Could Save The Whales. Could It Kill The Industry?
Unexpected life is discovered in a deep, dark Antarctic world
Ocean science into action
From collaborations with fishermen to whale-sensing smart cameras, these five solutions-based stories will give you hope in 2021
Read More