Oceanus Online Archive
10,000 Earth & Ocean Scientists. Five days.
Over the next week, I will be posting daily reports about what’s happening at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting. This is the premier meeting in the field of Earth sciences, and it has…
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Action, Camera … Lights
Exploring the sunless seafloor can be like using a flashlight to find something in a dark basement. Now Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientists and engineers have built a portable light system to illuminate the depths, essentially transforming areas of the deep sea into a photography studio.
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Scientists Find a New Twist in How Squids Swim
Erik Anderson was vexed by some scientific papers he read during his first year of graduate studies. Engineers had asserted that squids likely propelled themselves through water by creating vortex rings. Anderson begged to differ. Together with Mark Grosenbaugh, he set up a series of experiments to check the theories against some observational evidence.
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‘Seasonal Pump’ Moves Water Between Ocean and Aquifers
Hydrologists Ann Mulligan of WHOI and Holly Michael and Charles Harvey of MIT have cleared up a mystery of why so much salty water emerges from aquifers into the coastal ocean. The researchers discovered a counterintuitive seasonal pumping system at work.
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Should Eastern Oysters Be Put on the Endangered List?
Eastern oysters in Chesapeake Bay were not as happy as clams, and neither was Wolf-Dieter Busch. The environmental consultant from Maryland knew that overharvesting, habitat loss, poor water quality, and…
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Scientific (and Surfing) Safari
Eric Montie has a great tan, photos of huge waves taped above his computer, and a penchant for grabbing his short board and racing to the beach at a moment’s notice.…
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A Mysterious Disease Is Infecting Northeast Clam Beds
Scientists follow clues to the mysterious disease that is killing off clams on Cape Cod and along the Eastern Seaboard.
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Finding Nemo…and Other Endangered Fish
A novel method to track fish larvae?using tetracycline to tag otoliths, or ear bones?sheds lights on which marine areas to protect
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Cold Comfort for Barnacles
A WHOI research team reports that barnacle larvae can remain frozen up to seven weeks and still revive, settle, and grow to reproduce. The discovery offers a new understanding of barnacle larvae, which are abundant sources of food for larger animals in the coastal ocean. It also provides possible clues to how other intertidal marine invertebrates may settle and survive harsh winters.
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Earth Can’t Soak Up Excess Fossil Fuel Emissions Indefinitely
Earth?s land and oceans have been soaking up the excess carbon Earth?s land and oceans have been soaking up the excess carbon dioxide that humans have pumped into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. But there are limits.
A new-generation computer model indicates that the capacity of land and ocean to absorb and store the heat-trapping greenhouse gas will reach its peak by the end of the century?removing a brake that has been tempering the effects of global warming.
Nafanua, Eel City, and the Crater of Death
WHOI geochemist Stan Hart and colleagues have discovered a fast-growing volcano, dubbed Nafanua, inside the crater of Vailulu’u, a 14-300-foot active volcano that should begin the next island in the Samoan chain. They also found a novel hydrothermal community, which they named “Eel City,” and a lifeless zone in the caldera, which they call the “Crater of Death.”
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Big Whale, Big Sharks, Big Stink
A shipping tanker first spotted the whale on Sept. 9 about 24 miles southeast of Nantucket, Mass. It floated belly up—species unknown, cause of death a mystery. Like a detective,…
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Fresher Ocean, Cooler Climate
Large and climatically sensitive regions of the North Atlantic Ocean have become less salty since the late 1960s, a trend that could alter global ocean circulation and spur climate changes by the 21st century.
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Building an Automated Underwater Microscope
A conversation with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution biologist Heidi Sosik about her work studying phytoplankton ecology in the coastal ocean and the new instrument, the Imaging FlowCytobot, that she and biologist Rob Olson developed. Sosik describes the importance of phytoplankton to the food web and ecology of the coastal ocean, and how this new instrument, which will be deployed this summer, represents a breakthrough in year-round monitoring of coastal phytoplankton communities.
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The Improbable Voyage of Al Woodcock
Al Woodcock, perhaps the last man to sail on the maiden voyage of WHOI’s first research vessel Atlantis in 1931, died Feb. 26. He was 99. A self-educated farm boy from Georgia, Woodcock was also a keen observer of the natural world. He ascended to the scientific staff at WHOI and published seminal papers on “Observations of Herring Gull Soaring,” “The Swimming of Dolphins,” and “Sea Salt in a Tropical Storm.? Starting in 1949, he published a series of seven pioneering papers on sea-salt particles and their role in the formation of fog and rain. His research gained the profound respect of the nation’s foremost scientists.
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An Experiment to Dye For
WHOI scientists are exploring an experimental technique to track the complex movements of water in the oceans using harmless fluorescent dyes and airplanes equipped with Light Detection and Ranging instruments. To detect motion, LIDAR uses pulses of laser light, which cause the flowing dye to fluoresce.
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An Officer and a Graduate Student
Six hundred eighty-two students have earned master?s and doctoral degrees since the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering began in 1968. After shaking hands and accepting their diplomas, 61 of them took off their academic robes and put their Navy uniforms back on. Nine more will do so in the next two years.
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Anything-But-A-Boat Regatta
Shoveling and splashing toward a finish line ringed with spectators in Woods Hole, WHOI employees and students revived a tradition this summer: the Anything-But-A-Boat Regatta, which was first run to celebrate WHOI?s 50th year in 1980.
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Meet the Class of 2005-2007
Nine U.S. Navy officers are pursuing graduate degrees in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering through a special arrangement between the institutions.
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Joyce, Evans Give Testimony on Oceans to Congress
WHOI scientists Rob Evans and Terry Joyce testified June 8 before the House Subcommittee on Fisheries and Oceans, chaired by Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.) in a continuing effort to help educate the U.S. House of Representatives on the oceans.
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Cartwheeling Grad Student Earns Panteleyev Award
Margaret Boettcher knows a fast stress reliever: turn upside down. “Handstands and cartwheels make people happy,” said Boettcher, who has taught fellow WHOI graduate students and postdoctoral researchers her relaxation…
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Where Currents Collide
In January 2005, a research cruise set out aboard R/V Oceanus for the tumultuous witnertime waters off Cape Hatteras—aptly nicknamed “the graveyard of the Atlantic.” During three weeks riding the waves, WHOI Research Associate Chris Linder kept a journal with pen and camera that includes “relentless North Atlantic storms battering our ship, instrument retrievals in the dead of night with blue water washing over the rail, and science gear shattered by 20-foot waves.”
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