Ocean Chemistry
What Happened to Deepwater Horizon Oil?
Officials pumped a huge amount of chemicals into the deep ocean during the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in an effort to disperse the oil. A study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences offers evidence that the dispersant may helped microbes break down the oil.
New Device Reveals What Ocean Microbes Do
Whether you’re a plant, animal, or even a microbe, you generally can’t conduct the business…
Let There Be Laser Light
WHOI scientists are developing new sensors using lasers to detect methane, carbon dioxide, and other…
Can Animals Live Without Oxygen?
In 2010, a research team garnered headlines when it published evidence of finding the first…
A Faster Way to Better Reactions
Finding new chemical reactions to synthesize commercial products more efficiently is big business and a…
Two Chemical Roads Diverge in an Open Ocean
An infographicon biomineralization
Minerals Made by Microbes
Some minerals actually don't form without a little help from microscopic organisms, using chemical processes…
A Mighty Mysterious Molecule
What gives sea air its distinctive scent? A chemical compound called dimethylsulfide. In a new…
How Did Earth Get Its Ocean?
Adam Sarafian overcame a learning disability and surmounted heights as a an All-American pole-vaulter—all before…
Earth’s Riverine Bloodstream
Like blood in our arteries in our body, water in rivers carry chemical signals that…
Short-circuiting the Biological Pump
The ocean has been sucking up the heat-trapping carbon dioxide (CO2) building up in our…
Coral Crusader
Graduate student Hannah Barkley is on a mission to investigate how warming ocean temperatures, ocean…
Hidden Battles on the Reefs
A new study led by WHOI scientists shows how changing ocean conditions can combine to…
Is Ocean Acidification Affecting Squid?
The rise in carbon dioxide in the ocean from fossil-fuel burning may have insidious impacts…
Scallops Under Stress
Like other marine species, scallops face multiple climate change-related problems. Summer Student Fellow Cailan Sugano…
Swimming in Low-pH Seas
Researchers knew that squid raised in acidified water developed abnormal balance organs. To find out…
Proteomics Reveals Ocean’s Inner Workings
In a new study, WHOI scientists have demonstrated how the emerging biomedical technique of measuring…
Uncovering the Ocean’s Biological Pump
Dan Ohnemus clearly remembers the highlight of his fourth-grade class in Bourne, Mass. He and…
Drug Discovery in the Ocean
WHOI scientists are investigating a wide range of unexplored microbes that produce chemicals with potential…
A River Runs Through It
The geochemical journey of carbon from the atmosphere to the river.
Of The River and Time
The Fraser River in western Canada is flowing with tiny time capsules. Inside them is…
Can Squid Abide Ocean’s Lower pH?
To most people, squid are calamari: delicious when fried. But to WHOI researchers Max Kaplan…
Corals’ Indispensable Bacterial Buddies
Coral reefs, like human beings, may be superorganisms that depend on communities of microbes living…
