Oceanus Online Archive
New Regulations Proposed for Offshore Fish Farms
Newly proposed legislation to regulate large-scale fish farming in the oceans around the United States incorporates major recommendations from a blue-ribbon task force organized by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution…
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Rescue Mission on the Seafloor
The two earthquake-monitoring instruments—each the size and weight of a small refrigerator—were glued to the ocean bottom by erupting lava that had flowed and hardened around them. If scientists could…
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Deep Ocean Waters Don’t Run Still
The ocean’s circulation is thought to play an important role in our climate by transporting heat from tropical regions toward Earth’s poles. Of particular interest is the circulation in the…
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Still Toxic After All These Years
This is a story about persistence—of oil, and of people. It began in 1969 when the barge Florida ran aground off Cape Cod, spilling 189,000 gallons of fuel. But it…
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The Lo-o-o-ng Core
Since the early part of the 20th century, scientists have been going to sea on ships equipped with long, hollow pipes called corers. These corers are used to collect seafloor…
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A Ridge Too Slow?
Ever since scientists first discovered vents gushing hot, mineral-rich fluids from the seafloor in the Pacific Ocean 30 years ago, they have found them in various places along the Mid-Ocean…
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Cell-sized Thermometers
Climate shifts are a repeating feature in Earth’s history, but humans have added so much greenhouse gas (especially carbon dioxide) to the atmosphere that climate is warming in our lifetimes.…
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Measuring Raindrops in the Ocean
Earth is often called the blue marble. But it’s more like a marble cake: a swirling batter of air, sea, and dirt stirred by our spinning planet and baking under…
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Letter from Kangiqsujuaq
Charlie’s Motel was a welcome break from Kangiqsujuaq’s airport in northernmost Quebec, where we had just spent six hours uselessly waiting for the plane that would take us home. But…
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Two Ships Passing Passengers in the Night
Into the frigid darkness, following two days of stormy weather, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s coastal research vessel Tioga left port shortly after 10 p.m. on March 6, with sea spray…
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Current Events off Antarctica
The scientific method can divert researchers down curious pathways. Human psychologists study mouse brains. Astrophysicists look for cosmic particles deep in mine shafts. Taxonomists trace bird evolution by studying feather…
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Dead Corals Do Tell Tales
Sometime around the beginning of the 17th century, a tiny drifting larva found the perfect piece of real estate to settle down, on the shallow seafloor off the island of…
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Follow the Carbon Trail
Carbon makes the world go around. It is the building block of life on Earth, and in the form of carbon dioxide gas in the atmosphere, it has a powerful…
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Young Pup Teaches an Old Robot New Tricks
Mike Jakuba was still a year away from being born when scientists found vents on the seafloor that gushed hot, mineral-rich fluids and were surrounded by bizarre life forms thriving…
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Would a Hagfish By Any Other Name Smell as Sweet?
It’s not hard to figure out how hagfish got their name, since they aren’t exactly warm and fuzzy. Slithery, skinny, coated in gooey slime, and often found wriggling and eating…
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Why the West Wind Wobbles
Winds and temperatures in Earth’s atmosphere vary from month to month and year to year in countless ways. Decades of monitoring the weather and climate have revealed a few simple…
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Reaching Up Into Perilous, Icy Waters
A year had passed since we deployed our mooring in the western Arctic Ocean, which is a long time to ponder the fate of an instrument in a stormy and…
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A Mooring Built to Survive the Irminger Sea
The 330-foot Royal Research Ship James Clark Ross heaved in 20-foot seas southeast of Greenland. Chief Scientist Bob Pickart and I were aft on the main deck, observing our recently…
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Deep-sea Tubeworms Get Versatile ‘Inside’ Help
Cross sections of the tubeworm Riftia pachyptila. (Courtesy of Enduring Resources for Earth Science Education) When scientists found lush thickets of 6-foot-tall, red-tipped tubeworms on the seafloor in 1977, they…
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Sunspots, Sea Changes, and Climate Shifts
Natural materials such as shells, ice, corals, and tree rings contain clues to help scientists piece together how our oceans, atmosphere, and land have changed in the past. The history…
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Lakes and Climates Have Their Ups and Downs
Between 5,400 and 3,000 years ago, something happened to New England’s climate. The region became drier. Water levels in lakes dropped. Several droughts persisted for hundreds of years, changing the…
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How Long Can the Ocean Slow Global Warming?
It is 4:30 a.m., far from land. A group of scientists clad in bright yellow foul-weather gear gathers in the open bay of a research ship. They wait in the…
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Ocean Circulation and a Clam Far From Home
In my first year of graduate school, I was stumped by a big question on my final exam in biological oceanography. Maybe I had missed the relevant lecture or an…
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The Once and Future Circulation of the Ocean
The short history of modern oceanographic observations—less than a century’s worth, really—doesn’t give us a long track record to evaluate how the ocean’s circulation has operated and changed in the…
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