Oceanus Online Archive
To Catch an Erupting Volcano
Augustine, an island volcano 170 miles southwest of Anchorage, Alaska, began erupting in December 2005. By February, Uri ten Brink of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in Woods Hole had…
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Do Fishing Regulations Lead to More Accidents?
Fishermen have argued that regulations about when and where they can catch fish have caused more sinkings and fatal accidents at sea. But a new statistical analysis by Woods Hole researchers has found no hard evidence to support that argument.
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Noxious Gas from the Mouth of Hell…
The hidden world of salps OFF THE ANTARCTIC PENNISULA—Biologists Larry Madin (WHOI) and Patricia Kremer (U. Connecticut) led a month-long cruise in January 2006 aboard the ice-strengthened ship L.M. Gould…
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A ‘Book’ of Ancient Sumatran Tsunamis
Exactly one year after the devastating 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Jian Lin found himself on a Chinese research vessel off Sumatra, floating above the epicenter of the seafloor earthquake that…
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Worlds Apart, But United by the Oceans
Jian Lin came of age in an era of both geological and political seismic shifts in China, experiencing the deadliest earthquake in the 20th century in Tangshen in 1976 and the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s. Then he immigrated to America and came full circle in 2005 to become the first U.S. scientist to co-lead a Chinese deep-sea research cruise.
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Mass Strandings Keep New Marine Mammal Facility Busy
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s new Marine Research Facility (MRF) opened its doors just in time for a terribly busy winter season. An unprecedented number of fatal dolphin and whale strandings…
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Changing the Course of Rivers and History
Punjab means “five rivers.” The region in northern Pakistan is named for the great rivers that branch through the landscape, creating an ancient cradle of civilization and a modern agricultural…
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Lurking Benignly on the Seafloor, the ‘Yeti’ Crab is Discovered
Biologist Cindy Van Dover routinely finds new, unusual creatures when she dives to unexplored areas of the ocean in the deep-sea submersible Alvin. So she was not particularly fazed when…
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About Oceanus Magazine
Oceanus explores the oceans in depth, highlighting the research and researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in news, features, and interviews.
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ABE—The Autonomous Benthic Explorer
The pioneering deep-submergence vehicle, now 10 years old, continues to demonstrate its versatility on each new cruise.
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The Oceans Have Their Own Weather Systems
From June to September 2005, oceanographer Dennis McGillicuddy and a team of more than 20 scientists from WHOI and five other marine science labs tracked an eddy named A4. It was the oceanic equivalent of a hurricane?a huge mass of water, spinning like a whirlpool, moving through the ocean for months, stretching across tens to hundreds of kilometers, stirring up a vortex of water and material from the depths to the surface. But unlike destructive hurricanes, eddies are productive.
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Live From the Tropics, It’s an Ocean Network
With a click of his computer mouse, Scott Gallager was swimming with the fishes off the west coast of Panama. Virtual reality? Well, the fish, corals, and currents are real;…
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The Hunt for 18° Water
In 1959, oceanographer Valentine Worthington gave a name and an identity to a long-observed but poorly understood phenomenon of the North Atlantic. Valentine described how the interior of the Sargasso Sea contained distinct parcels of water with remarkably constant salinity, density, and temperature?roughly 18? Celsius. Decades later, his successors from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and eight other institutions have launched a far-reaching program to examine the formation and evolution of Worthington?s famous water and how it might influence North Atlantic climate.
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Caught in the Middle of the Marine Mammal Protection Act
In the past few years, several research projects have been halted because of conflicting interpretations of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. Energy, shipping, and naval interests claim the MMPA hampers their ability to work in the sea. Environmentalists and animal rights want the act strictly enforced. In between are scientists.
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One of the Greatest Volcanic Shows on Earth
About 50,000 years ago, a huge meteorite smacked into our planet, gouging a hole more than a mile wide and 790 feet deep in India. Of the roughly 150 known…
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What Brings the Food that Brings the Whales?
Watching the gray, pitching ocean from the beach in Barrow, Alaska, Carin Ashjian, a biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), wonders if the seas are too rough for the…
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New Sonar Method Offers Window into Squid Nurseries
Squid fishing has increased substantially in the past decade, with no way to assess the continuing viability of the stock?until now.
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Dust Busters for the Oceans
Like most living things, microscopic marine plants need iron and other minerals to live and grow. On land, soil provides a ubiquitous source of minerals, but how do essential nutrients…
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Analyzing Ancient Sediments at Warp Speed
Like a toy out of a science fiction story, the X-ray fluorescence core scanner reveals intimate details of the composition of ancient mud and sediment–which can contain a variety of clues about past climate and environmental conditions on Earth–without breaking the surface. In a matter of hours, the XRF simultaneously captures digital photographs and X-ray images of every millimeter of a core sample, while detecting the presence of any of 80 chemical elements.
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Small Island. Big Ocean.
This week, more than 200 WHOI scientists and graduate students will brave the balmy trade winds, drooping palm trees, and misdirected laser pointers to present research in Honolulu. Reporters Hugh…
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An Ocean Warmer Than a Hot Tub
Scientists have found evidence that tropical Atlantic Ocean temperatures may have once reached 107°F (42°C)—about 25°F (14°C) higher than today. The surprisingly high ocean temperatures occurred millions of years ago…
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Graduate Student Discovers an Unusual New Species
Sheri Simmons gets into the rugged wilderness as often as she can, backpacking in Newfoundland, the Sierras, the Adirondacks, and Alaska—where she once encountered a grizzly bear on a trail.…
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Float 312, Where Are You?
The ocean is so enormous, even a fleet of 2,338 ocean-monitoring instruments can sail into it and go largely unnoticed. That’s what floats 312 and 393 were doing until something…
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Under-ice Floats Offer a ‘Breakthrough’
The Arctic Ocean, home to fierce winds, punishing temperatures, and thick sea ice, is no place for wimpy people?or machines. So when WHOI physical oceanographers Peter Winsor and Breck Owens set out to explore the largely unknown currents beneath the polar sea ice, they had to design an instrument with true grit. (Fifth in a five-part series.)
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