Oceanus Online Archive
The Rise of Orpheus
WHOI’s new deep-sea autonomous underwater vehicle moves one step closer to exploring the hadal zone—the deepest region of the ocean—to search for new clues about the limits of life on Earth, and possibly beyond.
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Rapid Response at Sea
As sea ice continues to melt in the Arctic and oil exploration expands in the region, the possibility of an oil spill occurring under ice is higher than ever. To help first responders cope with oil trapped under ice, ocean engineers are developing undersea vehicles that can map oil spills to improve situational awareness and decision making during an emergency.
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Where the Rivers Meet the Sea
Estuaries are the borderlands between salt and freshwater environments, and they are incredibly diverse both biologically and physically. The diversity and the high energy of the ecosystem make estuaries remarkably resilient.
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A tunnel to the Twilight Zone
Scientists track hungry blue sharks as they ride swirling currents down to the ocean twilight zone—a layer of the ocean containing the largest fish biomass on Earth
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Mining climate clues from our whaling past
Climate scientists work with historians to tap weather records from old New England whaling logbooks. They hope to leverage the historical data to gain new insights into modern-day climate conditions.
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A new way of “seeing” offshore wind power cables
Eager to share best practices and technical know-how with the offshore wind sector, WHOI researchers test out an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUVs)—a staple of oceanographic research—to see if it can perform subsea cable surveys faster and more economically than using large and expensive ships.
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Navigating the Changing Arctic
New, fully autonomous glider will collect critical-but-scarce ice thickness measurements from below the surface of the Arctic ocean.
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Tracking Radium in the Arctic
Jessica Dabrowski is an ocean chemist and a second-year graduate student in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography and Applied Ocean Sciences & Engineering. She travelled to the Arctic for […]
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A Rainfall Forecast Worth its Salt
WHOI scientist Ray Schmitt and sons take top prize in rainfall forecasting competition.
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Microplastics in the Ocean – Separating Fact from Fiction
WHOI scientists weigh in on the state of marine microplastics science.
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Mesobot, Follow that Jellyfish!
WHO scientists and engineers are developing an innovative autonomous deep-sea vehicle with hovering and manuevering capabilities that will allow it to follow animals without disturbing their environment and behavior.
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Chasing Ocean ‘Snowflakes’
Scientists envision putting a flotilla of devices in the ocean to act as “eyes” that can track the “marine snow” that drifts down into the ocean.
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Particles on the Move
An MIT-WHOI Joint Program student investigates what happens to nanoplastics once they’re ingested by fish.
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New Techniques Open Window into Anatomy of Mollusks
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists are using advanced medical imaging techniques and diagnostic tools to reveal the internal structures of a wide range of marine animals. Most recently they […]
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Round Up the Unusual Suspects
A variety of genetic techniques are advancing ocean scientists’ ability to identify which organisms live where in the vast ocean twilight zone and to find previously unknown species.
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A ‘Ticking Time Bomb’ in the Arctic
Scientists discover that the amount of heat in a major Arctic Ocean circulation system has doubled over the past 30 years. If the temperatures continue to spike, it could eventually spell trouble for the ice above.
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The Deep-See Peers into the Depths
Decades of research from many WHOI scientists and engineers have culminated in a multifaceted vehicle to explore deep-sea marine life.
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Harnessing the Power
Can wind developers and ocean scientists work together to get US offshore wind cranking?
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A DISCO in the Ocean
To investigate coral bleaching, WHOI scientists figure out a novel way to take direct measurements in the ocean of superoxide, a key molecule that vanishes almost as soon as it is made.
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Do Microplastics in the Ocean Affect Scallops?
WHOI scientist Scott Gallager is making field observations and conducting lab experiments to explore the possible effects of microplastics in the ocean on marine organisms.
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Daily migration
Many twilight zone organisms participate in the largest migration on the planet. It happens around the globe, every day, sweeping across the world’s oceans in a massive, living wave. Every […]
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Coding Curiosity
The ocean is an extreme environment that is hard for humans to explore. One solution is building deep-sea robots that can autonomously make decisions on what to look for and where.
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