Deep-sea musings
Roboticist Gwyneth Packard on the need for ocean exploration today
Harnessing the ocean to power transportation
WHOI scientists are part of a team working to turn seaweed into biofuel
Casting a wider net
The future of a time-honored fishing tradition in Vietnam, through the eyes of award-winning photographer Thien Nguyen Noc
Gold mining’s toxic legacy
Mercury pollution in Colombia’s Amazon threatens the Indigenous way of life
How do you solve a problem like Sargassum?
An important yet prolific seaweed with massive blooms worries scientists
Ancient seas, future insights
WHOI scientists study the paleo record to understand how the ocean will look in a warmer climate
Rising tides, resilient spirits
As surrounding seas surge, a coastal village prepares for what lies ahead
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Our Ocean. Our Planet. Our Future.
Whistle! Chirp! Squeak! What does it mean?
Avatar Alliance Foundation donation helps WHOI researcher decode dolphin communication
We can’t do this alone
For marine chemist Adam Subhas, ocean-climate solutions don’t happen without community
How WHOI helped win World War II
Key innovations that cemented ocean science’s role in national defense
Life at the margins
Scientists investigate the connections between Ghana’s land, air, sea and blue economy through the Ocean Margins Initiative
Grits, storms, and cosmic patience
As storms stall liftoff, Europa Clipper Mission Team member Elizabeth Spiers patiently awaits the biggest mission of her life
New underwater vehicles in development at WHOI
New vehicles will be modeled after WHOI’s iconic remotely operated vehicle, Jason
Learning to see through cloudy waters
How MIT-WHOI student Amy Phung is helping robots accomplish dangerous tasks in murky waters
A rare black seadevil anglerfish sees the light
A viral video shows a denizen of the ocean’s twilight zone making an unusual trip to the surface
Unseen Ocean
Artist Janine Wong and scientist Jing He capture the art of currents in “Submesoscale Soup”
Five marine animals that call shipwrecks home
One man’s sunken ship is another fish’s home? Learn about five species that have evolved to thrive on sunken vessels
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Deep-sea amphipod name inspired by literary masterpiece
Name pays tribute to Cervantes’ Don Quixote and reinforces themes of sweetness and beauty
5 Takeaways for the Ocean from the COP29 Climate Conference
Explore the key outcomes from this year’s UN Climate Conference
Go with the flow
Mike Singleton, relief captain, R/V Neil Armstrong describes the intricate dance of navigating ocean currents during scientific expeditions
A gift for ocean research
Boater and oceanography enthusiast Steven Grossman supports innovative WHOI projects with $10 million donation
Nature’s Language
Using applied math (and chalk) to understand the dynamic ocean
Navigating new waters
The engineering team at the Ocean Observatories Initiative overcomes the hurdles of deploying the coastal pioneer array at a new site
Ocean in Motion
How the ocean’s complex and chaotic physics defines life on our planet
The case for preserving deep-sea biodiversity
WHOI biologist Annette Govindarajan offers her takeaways from the COP16 UN Convention on Biological Diversity in Colombia
An immersive twilight zone exhibit
An ARTECHOUSE and WHOI collaboration in Washington, D.C. is transporting visitors to a hidden layer of the ocean
A Northern Winter
As the 1996-1997 ship schedule began to take shape in 1995, we learned that Voyage 147 would take R/V Knorr into the North Atlantic from October ’96 through March of ’97. The various science missions would require station keeping during CTD casts, deployment of current drifters, and expendable bathythermograph (XBT) launches, as well as weather system analysis designed to put Knorr in the path of the harshest weather conditions possible during the winter season. Long before the cruise, we began to tap all available assets that would help us with this challenge.
Adventure in the Labrador Sea
The sound of the general alarm bell reverberated through the ship. At 2:30 AM, this couldn’t be a drill. Even more puzzling, we were still dockside in Halifax, four hours from our scheduled departure for the Labrador Sea.
“What a Year!”
Four technologies that have been developing separately for some time were brought together this year by WHOI’s Deep Submergence Laboratory (DSL) to serve three very different user communities. With images from the towed vehicle Argo II and the remotely operated vehicle Jason, DSL scientists and engineers created mosaic images of a sunken British cargo ship and 20-meter-tall hydrothermal vent chimneys, both in the Pacific Ocean, and ancient shipwreck sites in the Mediterranean. The three expeditions thus served the marine safety, scientific, and archaeological communities.
Access to the Sea
Oceanographic fieldwork has traditionally meant going to sea on a ship. In recent years, it has expanded to include activities that may require a ship for a short period but then continue independently. Floats that drift with ocean currents, periodically reporting their positions via satellite, for example, are generally launched from ships but do most of their work independently. Long-term seafloor observatories may need ships to set them up and service them occasionally, but, again, they are designed to collect data for long periods without needing a ship. We have come to think of the body of ways oceanographers glean information from the ocean as “access to the sea,” and so that is the topic for this issue of Oceanus.
The Magnetic Thickness of a Recent Submarine Lava Flow
Submarine lava flows and their associated narrow feeder conduits known as dikes constitute the basic building blocks of the upper part of the ocean crust. We are only beginning to understand how lava erupts and forms on the seafloor by flooding topographic lows, flowing through channels or tubes, centralizing into volcanoes, or some combination of all of these.
New Data on Deep Sea Turbulence Shed Light on Vertical Mixing
The global thermohaline circulation is basically a wholesale vertical overturning of the sea, driven by heating and cooling, precipitation and evaporation.
Labrador Sea Water Carries Northern Climate Signal South
Changes in wind strength, humidity, and temperature over the ocean affect rates of evaporation, precipitation, and heat transfer between ocean and air. Long-term atmospheric climate change signals are imprinted onto the sea surface layer, a thin skin atop an enormous reservoirA? and subsequently communicated to the deeper water masses. Labrador Sea Water is a subpolar water mass shaped by air-sea exchanges in the North Atlantic. It is a major contributor to the deep water of the Atlantic, and changes of conditions in its formation area can be read several years later at mid-depths in the subtropics. Mapping these changes through time is helping us to understand the causes of significant warming and cooling patterns we have observed at these depths in the North Atlantic and links the subtropical deep signals back to the subpolar sea surface conditions.
North Atlantic’s Transformation Pipeline Chills and Redistributes Subtropical Water
Warm and salty waters from the upper part of the South Atlantic flow northward across the equator and then progress through the tropical and subtropical North Atlantic to reach high latitudes. Beginning with the intense northward flow of the Gulf Stream off the East Coast of the United States, these waters are exposed to vigorous cooling, liberating considerable oceanic heat to the atmosphere. This is the first stage of “warm water transformation within the North Atlantic, a process that culminates in the high latitude production of cold and fresh waters that return to the South Atlantic in deep reaching currents beneath the warm waters of the subtropics and tropics.
If Rain Falls on the OceanDoes It Make a Sound?
As with similar questions about a tree in the forest or a grain of sand on the beach, it may be hard to imagine that a few inches of rain matters to the deep ocean.
Alpha, Bravo, Charlie…
The ocean weather station idea originated in the early days of radio communications and trans-oceanic aviation. As early as 1921, the Director of the French Meteorological Service proposed establishing a stationary weather observing ship in the North Atlantic to benefit merchant shipping and the anticipated inauguration of trans-Atlantic air service. Up to then, temporary stations had been set up for special purposes such as the US Navy NC-4 trans-Atlantic flight in 1919 and the ill-fated Amelia Earhart Pacific flight in 1937.
Computer Modelers Stimulate Real and Potential Climate, Work Toward Prediction
Although weather forecasting is accepted by the public as part of daily life, oceanic forecasting is not yet so advanced. There are, however, successful examples of oceanic forecasting—one is the newly developed skill to predict El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events, largely due to improvements in ocean modeling.
A Century of North Atlantic Data Indicates Interdecadal Change
For hundreds of years mariners have recorded the weather over the world ocean. Some 100 million marine weather reports have accumulated worldwide since 1854, when an international system for the collection of meteorogical data over the oceans was established. These reports include measurements of sea surface temperature, air temperature, wind, cloudiness, and barometric pressure. In the 1980s, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) compiled these weather observations into a single, easily accessible digital archive called the Comprehensive Ocean-Atmosphere Data Set. This important data set forms the basis for our empirical knowledge of the surface climate and its variability over the world’s oceans: One example of a variable system is the phenomenon known as El Nino in the tropical Pacific. A major challenge in climate research is to use these data to document and understand the role of the oceans in long-term—decadal and centennial—climate change.