Oceanus Online Archive
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…
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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.
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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…
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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…
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Bringing a Lab to the Seafloor
Scientists can’t really know if new oceanographic instruments will really work until they try them in actual conditions in the real ocean. In this case, the rubber hit the road at the bottom of the sea.
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Big Questions About Tiny Bacteria
It’s 3 a.m., and Jesse McNichol is struggling to stay awake. Since midafternoon, he’s been in his lab, tending to a jumble of glassware, plastic tubing, and metal cylinders filled…
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Deep-sea Detectives
Links to related materials Mid-Ocean Ridges—Articles, illustrations, and video showing how new seafloor crust forms Mapping the Seafloor with Multibeam Sonar Profile of Marshall Swartz Story of the SDSL Data-Link…
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Deep-sea Vents Yield New Species
Call it “midnight at the OASES.” Neither permanent darkness nor extreme pressure and heat cause problems for a host of new deep-sea species found in January by an international research…
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A Serendipitous Seafloor Sample
This research was funded by the National Science Foundation. The pillow lava display and coffee table were funded by the Deep Ocean Exploration Institute at WHOI.
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In Search of the Pink and White Terraces
The dazzling Pink and White Terraces on the shores of Lake Rotomahana at one time were the greatest national treasure of New Zealand. They were cherished by the Maori and…
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Powerful Currents in Deep-Sea Gorges
On my first major research cruise, the ship was hit by a hurricane. On the second, the weather was even worse. In one particularly nasty storm, I remember standing braced…
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Searching for Life on the Seafloor
Smaller than a fingernail, like bits of downy red feathers, baby tubeworms cling to a vertical wall towering alongside the submersible Alvin 2,500 meters beneath the sea in 2006. Repaved…
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Once More Unto the Rift
In the beginning, there was the Garden of Eden. It was a lush primordial oasis of life, bursting with exotic life forms. Now, scientists have embarked on a research expedition…
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Engineer Par Excellence: Donald Koelsch
Dave Ross should have been sleeping. He was on a research ship in 1975, at sea near the mouth of the Nile. It was 3 a.m., but instead of lying…
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A Hunt for Unusual Seafloor Animals and Vents
The first expedition to search for deep-sea hydrothermal vents along the Mid-Cayman Rise deep in the Caribbean Sea turned up a bonanza. Scientists found evidence for three active vent sites,…
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The Call of the Sea
Marshall Swartz’s lab is a Santa’s workshop of engineering gadgetry. Computer keyboards and circuit boards spill from cardboard boxes. Cables, wires, and an assortment of tools hang from wall hooks.…
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ROV Jason Images the Discovery of the Deepest Explosive Eruption on the Sea Floor
<!– –> West Mata Eruption, 2009 Courtesy NSF, NOAA, and WHOI Advanced Imaging and Visualization Lab
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Undersea Asphalt Volcanoes Discovered
The dome-like mounds poking up in sonar maps of the seafloor caught scientists’ eyes. They stood out in stark contrast to the surrounding environment off the coast of Santa Barbara,…
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The Mysterious Movements of Deep-Sea Larvae
The marvelous migrations of fish and whales through the deep sea have been hard enough for us humans to follow. But what about tiny organisms—many smaller than the dot beneath…
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The Promise and Perils of Seafloor Mining
A year ago, the Canadian mining company Nautilus Minerals was poised to launch a new industry: mining the deep ocean floor. All Nautilus had to do was finish building special…
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Gar Secrist
Gar Secrist says that he spent his summer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) working on “sandwiches.” His weren’t ordered in from a deli, but rather retrieved from the seafloor.…
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Garrett Mitchell
For Garrett Mitchell, an interest in oceanography arose not in a university classroom but on a surfboard in the waters of California. Living there while taking a few years off…
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Nereus Soars to the Ocean’s Deepest Trench
It took a village of engineers to build a completely new type of unmanned deep-sea robot that can reach the deepest part of the ocean. On May 31, 2009, a…
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Miles Under the Sea, Hanging on by Hair-Thin Fiber
Andy Bowen has been developing robotic deep-sea technology for many years, starting his career at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the 1980s by working on Jason Jr., the small tethered…
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