Oceanus Online Archive
Journey Into the Ocean’s Microbiomes
Bacteria in the ocean, including pathogenic ones, often hitchhike on tiny crustaceans called copepods. A graduate student explored their complex relationships.
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Minerals Made by Microbes
Some minerals actually don’t form without a little help from microscopic organisms, using chemical processes that scientists are only beginning to reveal.
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Through the Looking-Glass of the Sea Surface
Scientists are using new technology to make previously impossible measurements at the turbulent ocean surface—a crucial junction for energy exchange between the air above and the sea below.
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A Mighty Mysterious Molecule
What gives sea air its distinctive scent? A chemical compound called dimethylsulfide. In a new study, WHOI scientists show that the compound may also be used by marine microbes to communicate with one another.
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Recipes for Antibiotic Resistance
MIT-WHOI graduate student Megan May is investigating how microbes naturally develop resistance to antibiotic compounds in the marine environment and how human activities, including overuse of drugs and pollution, may be affecting the dynamic.
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Seal Whiskers Inspire Marine Technology
The night approaches quickly. A harbor seal plunges into the water, diving deep as the sunlight recedes. Through the dark, turbid waters, she searches for fish. Suddenly, the whiskers on…
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Sex, Games, and the Evolution of Gender Gaps
Population models can help us plan breeding programs for endangered species and understand the evolution of sex ratios.
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How Did Earth Get Its Ocean?
Adam Sarafian overcame a learning disability and surmounted heights as a an All-American pole-vaulter—all before launching a scientific career that has now allowed him to hurtle across the universe and back through time to the period when Earth was still forming.
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Specks in the Spectrometer
Mass spectrometer facilities can be a rite of passage for scientists—as well as for the samples analyzed inside the mass specs.
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Epiphany Among the Manta Rays
There’s a great need to collect ocean temperature data. And there are millions of scuba divers out there.
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Carbon Cycle
Carbon is a building block for all life and plays a key role in regulating Earth’s climate. It shuttles throughout the planet in two major cycles.
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Earth’s Riverine Bloodstream
Like blood in our arteries in our body, water in rivers carry chemical signals that can tell us a lot about how the entire Earth system operates.
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Ice, Wind & Fury
Greenlanders are well away of piteraqs, the hazardous torrents of cold air that sweep down off the ice cap. But scientists are just beginning to unravel how and when piteraqs form.
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Forecasting the Future of Fish
How can we weigh all the interrelated factors involved in managing a critical ocean resource? Oceanus magazine experiments with a graphic article to help explain a complex issue.
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Leaf Wax: A Chemical Journey
Lake Titicaca in the Andes Mountains of South America is an extraordinary place to explore ancient human civilization, Earth’s climate history, and the flow of carbon through our planet.
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Tracking a Trail of Carbon
Lake Titicaca in the Andes Mountains of South America is an extraordinary place to explore ancient human civilization, Earth’s climate history, and the flow of carbon through our planet.
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The Riddle of Rip Currents
Rip currents claim more than 100 lives in the United States each year and are the leading cause of lifeguard rescues. Scientists created a large gash in the seafloor to learn more about their complex dynamics.
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Setting a Watchman for Harmful Algal Blooms
As harmful algal blooms are becoming more frequent and severe worldwide, researchers in the lab of WHOI biologist Don Anderson are testing an array of new instruments that can be…
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The Man Who Opened Our Ears to the Ocean
Over his long career at WHOI, Bill Watkins pioneered new instruments to collect sounds of whales, dolphins, and other marine mammals. That treasure trove will now be archive in the…
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An Appetite Stimulant for Bacteria in the Ocean
PUAs kick bacteria’s metabolism and CO2 respiration rates into hyperdrive—ike skinny weightlifters after a steroid shot.
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Short-circuiting the Biological Pump
The ocean has been sucking up the heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) building up in our atmosphere—with a little help from tiny plankton. Like plants on land, these plankton convert CO2…
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