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Dive in and find answers to your deepest ocean questions. Why is the ocean blue? What causes ocean waves? How do I become and oceanographer? Get the facts and increase your ocean knowledge.
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Marine Mammals
How do marine animals hear?
Sound travels faster and farther in water than air, helping marine animals like whales, corals, and crabs navigate, communicate, and survive by detecting and responding to underwater acoustic signals.
Ocean Life
Can probiotics make coral reefs healthier?
Just as humans use probiotics to prevent sickness and promote better health, the Reef Solutions team at WHOI is trying to determine if a naturally-occurring probiotic in the ocean-a bacteria known as Synechococcus-can offer similar benefits to corals.
Ocean Life
Why is the ocean vital for our survival?
Without the ocean, life as we know it wouldn’t be possible.
Ocean Life
How do manatees stay hydrated?
Marine mammals need to hydrate-even in the saltiest of seas. Here’s how manatees stay fresh wherever they go.
Ocean & Human Lives
What happens in the ocean as a hurricane passes over?
Hurricanes are powerful storms that cause massive damage on land. Here’s a look at what happens below the surface during a storm.
Climate & Weather
What is a marine heatwave?
From waning winds to warmer atmospheres, here is the recipe for sudden temperature spikes in our ocean
Ocean Life
Why do emperor penguins toboggan?
Learn why Emperor penguins slide around on their bellies or “toboggan” when they’re on the move in Antarctica.
Ocean & Human Lives
How deep do marine plastics go?
Learn how plastic pollution pervades the ocean, from surface debris to deep-sea trenches. With 390 million tons produced annually, plastic poses a significant threat, impacting marine ecosystems and organisms.
Sustainable Ocean
How does ocean warming affect fisheries?
The ocean has absorbed 93% of excess heat from human activities, raising its temperature by 1.5°F since 1901. Warming oceans impact fish migration, leading to conflicts and overfishing.
Carbon Cycle
Where does all the carbon go?
Explore the ocean’s critical role in carbon sequestration and how it could be a pathway to mitigate climate change.
Ocean Tech
Can AI help us explore the ocean?
Learn how scientists at WHOI are using AI, like the software “Spock,” to enable autonomous underwater robots, such as Nereid Under Ice and CUREE, to study marine life and explore ocean environments.
Ocean Tech
What are ocean robots?
From the icy poles to sensitive coral reefs, robots empower us to understand more of the ocean than ever before. But just what are they?
Ocean Tech
How do ocean robots take the pressure?
Find out how engineers build robots to withstand the crushing pressures of the deep sea
Ocean Fact Checkers
The ocean plays a central-yet underappreciated-role in global climate and regional weather patterns, including droughts, rainstorms, and hurricanes.
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Ocean & Human Lives
Does plastic last for thousands of years in the environment?
Plastic pollution is a serious-and growing-environmental problem, with millions of tons of bags, bottles, fishing gear and more piling up on land and floating out to sea.
Ocean Life
Are offshore wind farms harming whales?
A collection of seemingly grass-roots organizations claim that offshore wind projects are responsible for an…
How the Ocean Works
Will the Gulf Stream really shut down?
Recent news headlines suggest the Gulf Stream current could shut down in just a few years-or perhaps a few decades-bringing about a catastrophic change in global climate.
How the Ocean Works
It’s always freezing in the Arctic. Or is it?
WHOI experts dig into a popular misconception that the Arctic is always frigid.
Ocean Life
Is the Great Barrier Reef making a comeback?
The world’s largest reef saw record growth after years of bleaching, but it’s not out of the woods yet
How the Ocean Works
Ocean acidification is no big deal, right?
Some people argue that ocean acidification isn’t an issue of concern. After all, they say,…
Climate & Weather
Is sea-level rise exaggerated?
WHOI’s Chris Piecuch debunks a long-standing myth
Climate & Weather
Are we heading toward another Little Ice Age?
In the 2004 blockbuster “The Day After Tomorrow,” the Northern Hemisphere experiences an abrupt and…
Creature Features
The ocean plays a central-yet underappreciated-role in global climate and regional weather patterns, including droughts, rainstorms, and hurricanes.
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Ocean Life
Creature Feature: Ctenophores
Bioluminescent blue-green “combs jellies” light up coastal shores at night, as well as the depths of the twilight zone, where a number of species have yet to be formally described.
Ocean Life
Creature Feature: Helmet Jellyfish
Due to their photo-sensitive red pigment, helmet jellies avoid sunlight like the plague, preferring the frigid depths of the twilight zone to the sun’s damaging rays.
Ocean Life
Creature Feature: Penguins
We might chuckle at the sight of penguins waddling over ice and belly-flopping into iceberg-studded waters, but these flightless birds would put Olympic swimmers to shame.
Ocean Life
Creature Feature: Elephant Seal
These enormous, blubbery marine mammals awkwardly belly-flop around on land, but are elegantly adapted for life in the twilight zone-where they spend 90% of their at-sea time.
Ocean Life
Creature Feature: Whale shark
Being the largest fish in the ocean (and the largest non-mammal vertebrate in the world) is just one of the surprising things about the whale shark.
Ocean Life
Creature Feature: Basking Shark
If the twilight zone had a yearbook, the basking shark would definitely be named “Most Chill.”
Ocean Life
Creature Feature: Giant Ostracod
Although their name makes them sound huge, the largest species of giant ostracod only measures about an inch long. Size is relative, however: that’s more than 30 times the size of average ostracods.
Ocean Life
Creature Feature: Glass squid
Glass squid spend their lives going with the flow. Literally. Filled with ammonium chloride, a solution that’s lighter than seawater, they float effortlessly through the ocean in search of mates and food.
Ocean Life
Creature Feature: Dragonfish
Dragonfish aren’t actually dragons, but with a slender, luminous barbel hanging from their chins and glowing blue-green lights covering their bodies, this species is downright otherworldly.
Ocean Life
Creature Feature: Lancetfish
Piercing the darkness of the twilight zone, the aptly-named lancetfish stops at nothing in pursuit of its target. Measuring up to two meters (6.6 feet) in length, lancetfish are some of the biggest creatures in the twilight zone.
Ocean Life
Creature Feature: Elongated Bristlemouth
With its needle-like fangs and long lower jaw, the elongated bristlemouth lives up to its name. Flexibility may be the key to this deep-sea fish’s success.
Ocean Life
Creature Feature: Black Swallower
In the ocean twilight zone, the ability to swallow more than you can chew is a matter of survival. But the black swallower takes the cake-or rather, the fish.
Ocean Life
Creature Feature: Bean’s bigscale
Very little is known about this bigscale or “ridgehead” fish.