Skip to content

News Releases


WHOI Announces 2016 Ocean Science Journalism Fellows

WHOI Announces 2016 Ocean Science Journalism Fellows

Seven writers, radio, and multimedia science journalists from the U.S., England, and India have been selected to participate in the competitive Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Ocean Science Journalism Fellowship program. The program takes place September 25-30, 2016, in Woods Hole, Mass., on Cape Cod.

Read More

WHOI is a ‘Rising Star’ in Research Performance

WHOI is a 'Rising Star' in Research Performance

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) was named one of the top 25 institutions in North America in the Nature Index 2016 Rising Stars, which identifies the countries and institutions that have significantly increased their research studies published in high-quality research journals.

Read More

SharkCam Tracks Great Whites into the Deep

SharkCam Tracks Great Whites into the Deep

On the first trip to study great white sharks in the wild off Guadalupe Island in 2013, the REMUS SharkCam team returned with an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) tattooed with bite marks and some of the most dramatic footage ever seen on Discovery Channel’s Shark Week: large great white sharks attacking the underwater robot, revealing previously unknown details about strategies sharks use to hunt and interact with their prey.

Read More

Artifacts Discovered on Return Expedition to Antikythera Shipwreck

Artifacts Discovered on Return Expedition to Antikythera Shipwreck

An international research team led by archaeologists and technical experts from the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports and WHOI has discovered spectacular artifacts during its ongoing excavation of the famous ancient Antikythera Shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in the Aegean Sea.

Read More

Fishermen, Scientists Collaborate to Collect Climate Data

Fishermen, Scientists Collaborate to Collect Climate Data

To help understand the ongoing changes in their slice of the ocean, a group of commerical fishermen in southern New England are now part of a fleet gathering much-needed climate data for scientists through a partnership with the Commercial Fisheries Research Foundation (CFRF) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). 

Read More

Study Offers Clues to Better Rainfall Predictions

Study Offers Clues to Better Rainfall Predictions

WHOI scientists have found a potential path to better seasonal rainfall predictions. Their study shows a clear link between higher sea surface salinity levels in the North Atlantic Ocean and increased rainfall on land in the West African Sahel, the area between the Sahara Desert and the savannah in Sudan.

Read More

Swarming Red Crabs Documented on Video

Swarming Red Crabs Documented on Video

A research team studying biodiversity at the Hannibal Bank Seamount off the coast of Panama has captured unique video of thousands of red crabs swarming in low-oxygen waters just above the seafloor.

Read More

R/V Neil Armstrong Arrives in Woods Hole

R/V Neil Armstrong Arrives in Woods Hole

On April 6, the research vessel Neil Armstrong was met by a jubilant crowd at the WHOI dock as it arrived to its home port for the first time, escorted by the WHOI coastal research vessel R/V Tioga, two Coast Guard boats and fireboats from neighboring towns.

Read More

Major Source of Methanol in the Ocean Identified

Major Source of Methanol in the Ocean Identified

Scientists have long known methanol exists in the ocean, and that certain microbes love to snack on it, but they’™ve been stymied by one key question: where does it come from? Researchers at WHOI have solved this mystery through the discovery of a massive ‘“ and previously unaccounted for ‘“ source of methanol in the ocean: phytoplankton.

Read More

Fukushima Site Still Leaking After Five Years, Research Shows

Fukushima Site Still Leaking After Five Years, Research Shows

Five years after the Fukushima accident, scientific data about the levels of radioactivity in the ocean off our shores are available publicly thanks to ongoing efforts of independent researchers, including WHOI radiochemist Ken Buesseler, who has led the effort to create and maintain an ocean monitoring network along the U.S. West Coast.

Read More

Fiamma Straneo Selected for Prestigious Sverdrup Lecture

Fiamma Straneo

The American Geophysical Union (AGU) has chosen Fiamma Straneo, a physical oceanographer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), to deliver the Sverdrup Lecture at this year’s meeting of the Ocean Sciences section held in New Orleans from February 21-26, 2016. The lecture is one of the highest awards the section bestows on its members. 

Read More

Can animals thrive without oxygen?

Can animals thrive without oxygen?

In 2010, a research team garnered attention when it published evidence of finding the first animals living in permanently anoxic conditions at the bottom of the sea. But a new […]

Read More

Study Reveals Climate Change Impacts on Buzzards Bay

Study Reveals Climate Change Impacts on Buzzards Bay

Utilizing 22 years of data collected by a network of citizen scientists, researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and their colleagues at the Buzzards Bay National Estuary Program, the Buzzards Bay Coalition, and the Marine Biological Laboratory found that average summertime temperatures in embayments throughout Buzzards Bay warmed by almost 2 degrees Celsius—roughly 4 degrees Fahrenheit.

Read More

Robotic Vehicles Offer a New Tool in Study of Shark Behavior

Robotic Vehicles Offer a New Tool in Study of Shark Behavior

The dramatic video footage of a great white shark attacking the “REMUS SharkCam” autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) brought some of the highest ratings to Discover Channel’s Shark Week 2014 and went viral on the Internet.  

But while the footage was unprecedented, the scientific understanding enabled by the REMUS SharkCam is just as groundbreaking.  The AUV was used during a science expedition in 2013 to better understand white shark behavior and represents the first successful efforts to autonomously track and image any animal in the marine environment. The research provides critical data to efforts to conserve these animals.

“We wanted to test the REMUS SharkCam technology to prove that is was a viable tool for observing marine animals – sharks in this case – and to collect substantial data about the animals’s behavior and habitat,” said WHOI engineer Amy Kukulya, one of REMUS SharkCam’s principal investigators.

The research results were recently published in the Journal of Fish Biology.  The paper’s lead author is Greg Skomal, a biologist with the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries. In addition to Kukulya, co-authors include biologist E. M. Hoyos-Padilla of Pelagios-Kakunjá, a Mexican marine conservation organization, and WHOI engineer and REMUS SharkCam software developer Roger Stokey.  

Read More