News Releases
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 MoreWHOI 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 MoreScientists Now Listening for Whales in New York Waters With Real-time Acoustic Buoy
Scientists working for WCS’s (Wildlife Conservation Society) New York Aquarium and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) now have an “ear” for the New York region’s biggest “voices and singers”‘ the whales of New York Bight.
Read MoreSwansea University Professor Receives Prestigious Fulbright Award to Study at WHOI
David Lamb, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at Swansea University in Wales, will conduct research at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) as part of an All Disciplines Scholar Fulbright AwardâÃÂÃÂone of the most prestigious and selective scholarship programs operating worldwide.
Read MoreSharkCam 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 MoreArtifacts 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 MoreHistoric Marine Mammal Sound Archive Now Available Online
Over his more than 40 years as a scientist at WHOI, William Watkins led the effort to collect and catalog the vocalizations made by marine mammals. Now, a team from WHOI has launched the online, open access William Watkins Marine Mammal Sound Database.
Read MoreMIT/WHOI Joint Oceanography Program Achieves Milestone of 1,000th Degree
One of the nation’s preeminent graduate programs in oceanography has achieved a major milestone: This year, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Joint Program will confer its…
Read MoreFishermen, 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 MoreStudy 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 MoreWHOI Technology Used in Locating El Faro Data Recorder
Technology and vehicles developed and operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists and engineers were instrumental in assisting the NTSB in locating the voyage data recorder (VDR) of El Faro.
Read MoreWHOI Assists in Locating El Faro Voyage Data Recorder
A team of scientists and engineers from the NTSB, Coast Guard and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have located the voyage data recorder (VDR) of the sunken El Faro cargo ship.
Read MoreWHOI to Assist in NTSB Search for El Faro Data Recorder
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will assist the National Transportation Safety Board as it undertakes its second search April 18, 2016, for the vessel data recorder (VDR) of the sunken El Faro cargo ship.
Read MoreSteve Elgar Named National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellow
Steve Elgar, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), has been selected as a 2016 National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellow (NSSEFF) by the Department of Defense.
Read MoreWHOI Ocean Science Exhibit Center Opens for 2016 Season
The WHOI Ocean Science Exhibit Center opens for another fun and engaging summer season on April 18, 2016.
Read MoreSwarming 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 MoreR/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 MoreNewly Upgraded ROV Jason: Bigger and Better
A major, $2.4 million upgrade funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) has made the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Jason more capable than ever.
Read MoreMajor 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 MoreFukushima 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 MoreFiamma Straneo Selected for Prestigious Sverdrup Lecture
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 MoreCan 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 MoreStudy 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 MoreRobotic 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.
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