Oceanus Online Archive
A Lone Voice Crying in the Watery Wilderness
And speaking of whales, here is a story of whales speaking—or more precisely, one whale, with its own, distinctive 52-hertz voice.
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A “Thinking Map” of North America
For geologist Brian Tucholke, creating a new Geologic Map of North America was a 23-year adventure. Published in February by the Geological Society of America (GSA), the map illustrates the geology of approximately 15 percent of Earth?s surface and spans an area from the North Pole to Venezuela, and from Ireland to Siberia.
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Even Sperm Whales Get the Bends
It seemed only natural for deep-diving sperm whales to be immune from decompression illness, or the bends?the painful, sometimes fatal condition that human divers suffer when they surface too rapidly. But the whales may be as susceptible as land mammals, according to a new study by WHOI biologists.
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MIT/WHOI Graduate Leads the World’s Tsunami Awareness Program
Kong, a 1990 graduate of the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering, was one of the first people in the world to learn the magnitude of the underwater earthquake off the coast of Indonesia.
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Throwing DART Buoys into the Ocean
Deep Ocean Assessment and Reporting of Tsunamis (DART) buoys are the foundation of warning network
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What Could a Tsunami Network Look Like in the Future?
The Deep-ocean Assessment and Reporting (DART) system is battle-tested and operational, so it makes sense to use such buoys to address the immediate need for a tsunami network. Researchers at WHOI are concentrating on the next generation of multidisciplinary ocean observing platforms.
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Building a Tsunami Warning Network
Since the great Indonesian earthquake and tsunami of December 26, 2004, policy-makers and scientists around the globe have been embracing a rare moment of public attention on the oceans, accelerating plans to create a comprehensive tsunami-warning network and to make citizens better prepared for the next massive wave. Another potent earthquake along the same fault on March 28, 2005, has increased that sense of urgency.
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In the Tsunami’s Wake, New Knowledge About Earthquakes
If any good has come from the recent devastating earthquakes off Sumatra, it is that they are providing scientists with unprecedented clues to understanding how these large undersea earthquakes occur and how they create tsunamis.
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Tsunamis in the Caribbean? It’s Possible.
In a study published Dec. 24, 2004, in the Journal of Geophysical Research, Woods Hole geologists Uri ten Brink and Jian Lin reported a heightened earthquake risk from the Septentrional fault zone, which cuts through the highly populated Cibao valley in the Dominican Republic.
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A Glide Across the Gulf Stream
News of the first successful Gulf Stream crossing by a glider last November—and the launching today (Thursday, March 24) of Spray’s seven-week round-trip mission from Bermuda across the Gulf Stream and back—has caused a ripple among scientists, who recall the dream of famed WHOI oceanographer Henry Stommel.
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Playing Tag with Whales
The challenge of designing a device to learn what marine mammals do on dives is the stuff of dreams for an electronics engineer.
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Run Deep, But Not Silent
For the first time in history, we can accompany a whale on its dive, hear what it hears, and observe its normal, natural, previously hidden behavior in the depths. Working closely together, scientists and engineers have created an innovative new device—the digital acoustic recording tag, or D-tag. It attaches to a living whale and records nearly everything that happens on its dives, without disturbing the animal.
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Little Things Matter A Lot
One group of bacteria—the cyanobacteria—has completely transformed Earth’s environment through their long history. Three billion years ago, ancestors of cyanobacteria infused Earth’s ancient atmosphere with the byproduct of their photosynthesis—oxygen—changing the chemistry of the planet and setting the stage for entirely new oxygen-breathing life forms to evolve. Without the cyanobacteria, the life we see around us, including humans, simply wouldn’t be here.
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The Deeps of Time in the Depths of the Ocean
Wherever we have looked in the oceans, we have found previously unknown microorganisms. We have often found them living in conditions once thought to be incompatible with life, using unfamiliar physiologic and metabolic adaptations. These discoveries have radically changed our thinking about where and how life may have originated and evolved on this planet, and where it might exist on others.
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Tracking Fish to Save Them
For decades, the Nassau grouper (Epinephelus striatus) was one of the most sought-after fish species in the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico, from the Bahamas to Central America. These large, delicious fish live among coral reefs and have a breeding behavior that makes them especially vulnerable. They come together in aggregations of thousands to spawn at specific times and places, making them easy to catch—and to overfish.
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Mistaken Identity
Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have found that two chemicals accumulating in the tissues of marine animals and suspected to be manmade pollutants actually came from natural sources.
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Coral Gardens in the Dark Depths
The words “coral reefs” conjure up images of a tropical paradise: shallow, warm, aquamarine waters, bright sunlight, white coral sand, and colorful, darting fish. But corals also live deep in the sea, in regions where the sun doesn’t penetrate and water temperatures remain just above freezing.
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The Coastal Ocean Institute
We are all stewards of the coastal ocean. For some of us, the connection to the sea is clear and immediate; for others, it is subtle and distant. But whether you live on waterfront property or in a land-locked hamlet, your everyday activities affect this most sensitive and most threatened portion of the world?s oceans.
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Do Marine Protected Areas Really Work?
Today, Marine Protected Areas, or MPAs—areas of the ocean temporarily or permanently closed to harvesting—are being proposed to restrict not only fishing, but also mineral and hydrocarbon extraction, and other activities. Some advocates of MPAs suggest that at least 20 percent of the coastal and open ocean should be set aside and permanently zoned to protect ecosystems, sustain fish stocks, and reduce conflicts between users of the oceans.
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Robo-Sailors
In the mid-1990s, the Navy began funding research for small, robotic vehicles to perform unmanned reconnaissance in coastal waters. At WHOI, that helped spark the development of REMUS (Remote Environmental Monitoring UnitS), designed and built by Chris von Alt, Ben Allen, and colleagues in the Oceanographic Systems Laboratory.
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The Cacophony on the Coast
Unlike light, sound travels efficiently through water, and the Navy uses sound to monitor what’s going on in the ocean. To understand the sound messages transmitted through the seas, you need to understand the medium through which they are transmitted.
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New Instrument Sheds Light on Bioluminescence
Bioluminescence is ubiquitous in the oceans, and especially prevalent in coastal regions where nutrients are abundant and life thrives. Yet scientists have little basic understanding of how bioluminescence is influenced by water temperatures, depths, seasons, geographic locations, even different times of day.
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For the Navy, the Coast Isn’t Clear
Every so often, circumstances can conspire to make a battleship turn on a dime. Fifteen years ago, two geopolitical events prompted the U.S. Navy to abruptly change long-standing research priorities and steer rapidly in a new direction.
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Where Are Mines Hiding on the Seafloor?
Eternally and incessantly, waves and currents stir up sand from the seafloor near the coast. Sediments get suspended in the ocean, carried onshore and off, and deposited elsewhere. In the process, objects on the seafloor—natural and unnatural—can get buried and uncovered.
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