Oceanus Magazine - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Rebuilding Alvin: Rod Catanach

Engineer Rod Catanach describes the fabrication, testing, and installation of the syntactic foam that provides buoyancy for Alvin.

Ocean Tech

Ready, Set, Dive

Before scientists go to work in the morning at the bottom of the ocean in the submersible Alvin, a team of engineers, pilots, and ship’s crew performs a carefully orchestrated choreography.

How the Ocean Works

Uncovering the Ocean’s Biological Pump

Dan Ohnemus clearly remembers the highlight of his fourth-grade class in Bourne, Mass. He and his classmates made a satellite call to scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) who…

How the Ocean Works

Drug Discovery in the Ocean

WHOI scientists are investigating a wide range of unexplored microbes that produce chemicals with potential therapeutic value.

Ocean Life

Cystic Fibrosis

Illustration by Eric Taylor, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

Ocean Tech

Rebuilding Alvin: Jonathan Howland

The 25th installment in our series on the people at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who helped design and build the new and improved version of the submersible Alvin.

Ocean Tech

Rebuilding Alvin: Phil Forte

A new installment in our series on the team of people at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who helped design and build the new and improved version of the submersible Alvin.

How the Ocean Works

Of The River and Time

The Fraser River in western Canada is flowing with tiny time capsules. Inside them is a fascinating history of Earth’s landscape and climate. For the past four years, I have…

How the Ocean Works

A River Runs Through It

The geochemical journey of carbon from the atmosphere to the river.

Climate & Weather

Jet Stream Gets Fish in Hot Water

WHOI scientists traced a heat wave in the North Atlantic, and the disruption of fisheries that it caused, to an unusual pattern in air circulation months earlier.

Climate & Weather

Detours on the Oceanic Highway

WHOI graduate student Isabela Le Bras is exploring newly discovered complexities of the Deep Western Boundary Current, a major artery in the global ocean circulation system that transports cold water south from the North Atlantic.

Ocean Tech

A Buoy’s Long Strange Trip

Since 2004, WHOI scientists have deployed ice-tether profilers (ITPs) in polar sea ice to monitor changing conditions in the Arctic. ITP 47 found its way to the coast of Ireland.

Ocean Tech

Li’l Alvin

Tom Ryder is a professional underwater diver and a radio-controlled model builder. That combination, naturally, led to a fully operational miniature version of the deep-sea sub Alvin.

Ocean Life

The Mesocosm Lab

A mesocosm is an ecosystem in miniature, providing a useful middle ground between an indoor lab and the great outdoors.

The Mesocosm Lab Slideshow

Ocean Life

Mysterious Jellyfish Makes a Comeback

In July 2013, Mary Carman, a researcher at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, was diving in Farm Pond on Marthaâs Vineyard when something that felt like hypodermic needles stung her face.

Ocean & Human Lives

Message Bottled in an Email

Amid the dunes of a tiny island in the North Atlantic, a scientist found a sandblasted bottle with a note in it.

Ocean Life

WHOI CSI Lab Investigates Rare Whales

Two seldomly seen deep-diving whales called True’s beaked whales were found dead on a beach on Long Island, N.Y. Why did the whales, an adult female and male juvenile,die?

Ocean Life

What Causes the Atlantic to Bloom?

Every spring, waters in the North Atlantic Ocean explode into green and white patches as countless microscopic marine plants bloom.

How the Ocean Works

Can Squid Abide Ocean’s Lower pH?

To most people, squid are calamari: delicious when fried. But to WHOI researchers Max Kaplan and Aran Mooney, squid are another reason to be concerned about ocean acidification.

Ocean Life