Ocean Life
What Doomed the Stromatolites?
About a billion years before the dinosaurs became extinct, stromatolites roamed the Earth until they mysteriously disappeared. Well, not roamed exactly. Stromatolites (“layered rocks”) are rocky structures made by photosynthetic…
An Oddity about Lyme Disease Bacteria
The bacterial species that causes Lyme disease avoids a key human defense by not requiring…
Corals’ Indispensable Bacterial Buddies
Coral reefs, like human beings, may be superorganisms that depend on communities of microbes living…
An Ocean That’s No Longer Wild
Like most fathers, Simon Thorrold plays tag with his young daughter. But Thorrold, a biologist…
Mining Marine Microbes for New Drugs
The ocean is a combat zone where marine microbes are constantly making chemical compounds to…
Sassy Scallops
MIT-WHOI Joint Program graduate student Meredith White examined how increasingly acidic ocean waters affect scallop…
A Quest For Resilient Reefs
Anne Cohen’s forte is corals. From the skeletons of massive corals, she has extracted long-term…
The Harshest Habitats on Earth
With help from ROV Jason and a new, high-tech sampling instrument, scientists discover that even…
Why Haven’t the Cod Come Back?
A WHOI biologist is analyzing fish scales dating back to the 1930s to unravel changes…
An Ocean Instrument Is Born
Every new ocean instrument goes through growing pains. But the Submersible Incubation Device, nicknamed SID,…
Seabirds Face Risks from Climate Change
The research expedition ended in near-disaster. Stephanie Jenouvrier, aboard the ship Marion Dufresne II, was…
Marine Mammals Meet Modern Medicine
Whales do not make the easiest patients, but CT scans, MRIs, ultrasound, hyperbaric chambers, and…
A War of Knowledge to Save Sharks
Derya Akkaynak hails from a town called Urla in Turkey, and like most graduate students…
Swimming with Sharks
Amy Kukulya’s clients often have curious requests, but this was among the oddest. As an…
Caller IDs for Whales
Imagine extraterrestrials come to Earth, seeking to understand human life. They dangle recording devices beneath…
The Scientist and the Poet
Alice Alpert, a graduate student in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program, studies what the chemistry of…
Art Meets Science in a Book called Bloom
When conditions of light and nutrients align in the surface waters of the ocean, tiny…
Decoding the Mystery Fish
Few marine animals capture biologists’ imaginations more than the mysterious, almost mythical coelacanth, a 5-foot-long…
Fungi Flourish Below the Seafloor
Scientists have discovered a previously unknown diversity of fungi living far beneath the seafloor throughout…
Seismic Studies Capture Whale Calls
In November 2012, the California Coastal Commission met to consider a request by Pacific Gas…
Bacteria Hitchhike on Tiny Marine Life
Amalia Aruda knows that tiny marine creatures have big impacts. Some can kill you. Aruda…
A Day in the Life of a Phytoplankter
Earth’s vast oceans teem with innumerable microscopic plants that make the fertility and abundance of…