How the Ocean Works
The Remarkable Diversity of Seafloor Vents
Since 1982, I had spent most of my waking hours examining pieces of seafloor vent deposits that had been recovered during a routine dredging operation along the Juan de Fuca Ridge off the Pacific Northwest coast.
When Seafloor Meets Ocean, the Chemistry Is Amazing
Scientists are discovering that abundant quantities of methane gas are continually seeping from the seafloor…
The Engine that Drives Earth
Poets and philosophers have celebrated the timelessness of the land around us for eons, but…
If Rocks Could Talk…
Every rock on Earth contains a clock, a thermometer, and a barometer.
Conduits Into Earth’s Inaccessible Interior
Jules Verne wrote about a way to journey to the center of the earth, but…
Voyage to Vailulu’u
It was like a pirate’s treasure map. A dotted line clearly showed the trail, but…
Where the Surf Meets the Turf
The gentle lapping of waves on the beach is a metaphor for enduring tranquility. However,…
Launching the Argo Armada
The Argo program proposes to disperse 3,000 floats, like the one below, throughout the oceans…
How to Build a Black Smoker Chimney
Diving along the mid-ocean ridge at 21°N on the East Pacific Rise, scientists within the…
Hitting the Hotspots
The great volcanic mid-ocean ridge system stretches continuously around the globe for 60,000 kilometers, nearly…
The Cauldron Beneath the Seafloor
Just over 20 years ago, scientists exploring the mid-ocean ridge system first made the spectacular…
Life on the Seafloor and Elsewhere in the Solar System
The RIDGE program (Ridge Inter-Disciplinary Globe Experiments) was sharply focused on the global spreading center…
ALISS in Wonderland
In 1985, Cindy Van Dover, then a graduate student in biology in the MIT/WHOI Joint…
The Big MELT
More than 95 percent of the earth's volcanic magma is generated beneath the seafloor at…
Melt Extraction from the Mantle Beneath Mid-Ocean Ridges
As the oceanic plates move apart at mid-ocean ridges, rocks from Earth's mantle, far below,…
Exploring The Global Mid-Ocean Ridge
There is a natural tendency in scientific investigations for increased specialization. Most important advances are…
Mid-Atlantic Ridge Volcanic Processes
Long before the plate-tectonic revolution began in the 1960s, scientists envisioned drilling into the ocean…
Indian Ocean’s Atlantis Bank Yields Deep-Earth Insight
I never imagined I would spend six weeks of my life “wandering around” the seafloor…
A Current Affair
oal of probing the earth's inaccessible deep interior. But the technique remains something of a…
Extreme Trapping
One of oceanography’s major challenges is collection of data from extraordinarily difficult environments. For those…
Monsoon Winds and Carbon Cycles in the Arabian Sea
The monsoon, a giant sea breeze between the Asian massif and the Indian Ocean, is…
Continental Margin Particle Flux
The boundaries between the oceans and the continents are dynamic regions for the production, recycling,…
The Rain of Ocean Particles and Earth’s Carbon Cycle
WHOI Phytoplankton photosynthesis has provided Earth's inhabitants with oxygen since early life began. Without this…