Véronique LaCapra
Sentry Completes Its 500th Dive
WHOI’s free-swimming robot Sentry completed its 500th dive on October 16, 2018, off the Pacific Coast of Costa Rica. The autonomous underwater vehicle has used its sonar systems to help scientists map the seafloor, track the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, locate the voyage data recorder on the sunken El Faro cargo ship, and carry out advanced research on many other missions to help us better understand our ocean and our planet.
Read MoreWho Grows There?
Biofouling organisms—barnacles, tunicates, bryozoans, and other marine invertebrates—are a common sight on docks, ship hulls, rocks, and other hard underwater surfaces. WHOI postdoctoral scholar Kirstin Meyer has been studying the fouling community in coastal waters of Woods Hole, Mass., to assess how it develops and changes over time. Her preliminary results suggest that both water temperature and competition play a key role in driving community composition.
Read MoreOcean Observatories System Is Up and Running
The Ocean Observatories Initiative has reached a major milestone: Its network of ocean sensor systems is now fully operational and sending a broad, continuous stream of data back to shore. Funded by the National Science Foundation with a planned life of 25 years, the OOI provides online access to a growing trove of multidisciplinary oceanographic data, freely available to researchers, educators, and the public worldwide.
Read MoreSee Those Black Dots? They’re Penguins. Now Count Them.
That’s exactly what a team of researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) did on a recent expedition to the…
Read MoreEndangered Whales Get a High-Tech Check-Up
Drones seem to be everywhere these days, from backyards to battlegrounds. Scientists are using them too: in this case, to assess the health of endangered North Atlantic right whales. Since drones are small and quiet, they can fly close to whales without disturbing them, bringing back incredibly detailed photographs and samples of microbe-rich blow.
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