Oceanus Online Archive
Whale-safe Fishing Gear
WHOI engineers are developing a new kind of lobster trap buoy that could help keep whales from getting tangled in fishing gear.
Read More
Let There Be Laser Light
WHOI scientists are developing new sensors using lasers to detect methane, carbon dioxide, and other critical environmental gases in the air and under the ocean.
Read More
A Slithery Ocean Mystery
It’s an enduring mystery: How do tiny eel larvae make their way from the Sargasso Sea to coastal freshwater estuaries where they grow up?
Read More
Life Dwells Deep Within Earth’s Crust
Aboard a drillship in the Indian Ocean, geologists pursued their mission to bore a hole thousands of feet through the seafloor to reach the Moho, the mysterious and never-before-penetrated boundary…
Read More
Attracted to Magnetics
Maurice Tivey has probably endured more than a few bad puns, like the one in our headline, after he tells people what he does for a living. A geologist at…
Read More
The Quest for the Moho
For more than a century, scientists have made several attempts to drill a hole through Earth’s ocean crust to an interior layer of rock in Earth’s interior called the mantle.
Read More
Ocean Observatories System Is Up and Running
The Ocean Observatories Initiative has reached a major milestone: Its network of ocean sensor systems is now fully operational and sending a broad, continuous stream of data back to shore. Funded by the National Science Foundation with a planned life of 25 years, the OOI provides online access to a growing trove of multidisciplinary oceanographic data, freely available to researchers, educators, and the public worldwide.
Read More
Signs of Big Change in the Arctic
The climate in the Arctic region once predictably shifted back and forth between two regimes. But now the system seems to be stuck.
Read More
No Stone Unturned
WHOI iologist Joel Llopiz is taking advantage of information stored in the tiny “ear stones” of larval and juvenile river herring to learn more about why the once-ubiquitous species is having difficulty re-populating lakes and streams in New England.
Read More
Shark Tales
Sharks are some of the largest fish in the ocean, but their movements and behavior have remained largely hidden from people.
Read More
Beneath the Sea, the Galápagos Reveal More Marvels
The Galápagos Islands have offered biologists a natural laboratory ever since Charles Darwin’s day, but they’re also a frontier for geologists and volcanologists to test theories. The thirteen major volcanic…
Read More
Can Animals Live Without Oxygen?
In 2010, a research team garnered headlines when it published evidence of finding the first animals living in oxygen-free conditions at the bottom of the sea. But a new study…
Read More
As Bay Warms, Harmful Algae Bloom
Warming coastal waters off southern Massachusetts are worsening the effects of pollution from septic systems, wastewater treatment plants, and fertilizer runoff—and causing a rise in harmful algal blooms. Researchers at…
Read More
Crabs Swarm on the Seafloor
Expeditions to the tropics and Antarctica have turned up crab populations—for better or worse—in unexpected parts of the globe. At the Hannibal Bank Seamount, an 1,180-foot-high undersea mountain off Panana’s…
Read More
Tagging a Squishy Squid
For more than a decade, researchers have been tagging large marine mammals such as dolphins and whales to reveal their behavior. But tagging small, soft animals such as jellyfish and…
Read More
The Bottom of the Ocean On Top of Your Coffee Table
Here’s a way to journey to the seafloor without leaving your living room or classroom. Five deep-sea scientists have created a comprehensive, lavishly illustrated book that transports readers to Earth’s…
Read More
Illuminating an Unexplored Undersea Universe
Twenty-five years ago, the Hubble Telescope was launched to look out to the vast darkness of outer space. It captured thousands of images of previously unknown stars, galaxies, and clouds…
Read More
Mummified Microbes
Scientists have found evidence that microbes can thrive deep below the seafloor—sustained by chemicals produced by reactions between seawater and rocks in Earth’s mantle. It’s difficult to gain direct access…
Read More
A New Eye on Deep-Sea Fisheries
Imagine that officials charged with setting deer-hunting limits had to assess the herd’s abundance by flying over forests at night. That’s a little like what the National Marine Fisheries Services…
Read More
A Luxury-Laden Shipwreck from 65 B.C.
Scientists returned in 2015 and 2016 to the wreck of a 180-foot ship that sank off the Greek island of Antikythera around 65 B.C., and recovered luxury items that included…
Read More
A New Whale Species Is Discovered in the Wild
Scientists have discovered a thriving population of Omura’s whales—a species that hadn’t even been identified until 2003 and had never before been documented in the wild. Omura’s whales were misidentified…
Read More
Not Just Another Lovely Summer Day on the Water
It looks like nice summer day on the water, but Alexis Fischer (right) and Alice Alpert, graduate students in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program, are hard at work preparing instruments called…
Read More
Coral Coring
Off a small island in the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) biogeochemists Konrad Hughen and Colleen Hansel use a special underwater drill to take…
Read More
See Those Black Dots? They’re Penguins. Now Count Them.
That’s exactly what a team of researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) did on a recent expedition to the Danger Islands off the Antarctic Peninsula. The islands are home…
Read More