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Novel Ocean-Crust Mechanism Could Affect World’s Carbon Budget

The Earth is constantly manufacturing new crust, spewing molten magma up along undersea ridges at the boundaries of tectonic plates. The process is critical to the planet?s metabolism, including the cycle of underwater life and the delicate balance of carbon in the ocean and atmosphere. Now, scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have observed ocean crust forming in an entirely unexpected way?one that may influence those cycles of life and carbon and, in turn, affect the much-discussed future of the world?s climate.

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WHOI Launches Ocean Awareness Video Campaign in NYC

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has launched a video campaign on the world’s biggest stage to highlight the importance of the planet’s largest life-sustaining feature—the ocean.

The three-month ocean awareness […]

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What Lives in the Sea?

The Census of Marine Life, a ten-year project to catalog all life in the sea, discovered more than 6,000 new species during its “decade of discovery,” scientists reported as they […]

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WHOI Scientists Map and Confirm Origin of Large, Underwater Hydrocarbon Plume in Gulf

Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) detected and characterized a plume of hydrocarbons that is at least 22 miles long and more than 3,000 feet below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico, a residue of the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The work presents a forensic snapshot of the plume characteristics in June and is reported in a study appearing in the Aug. 19 issue of the journal Science.

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WHOI Announces 2010 Ocean Science Journalism Fellows

Ten writers and multimedia science journalists from the U.S. and Great Britain have been selected to participate in the competitive Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Ocean Science Journalism Fellowship program. […]

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The Salp: Nature’s Near-Perfect Little Engine Just Got Better

What if trains, planes, and automobiles all were powered simply by the air through which they move? Moreover, what if their exhaust and byproducts helped the environment?
Well, such an energy-efficient, self-propelling mechanism already exists in nature. The salp, a smallish, barrel-shaped organism that resembles a kind of streamlined jellyfish, gets everything it needs from the ocean waters to feed and propel itself. And, scientists believe its waste material may actually help remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the upper ocean and the atmosphere.

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WHOI To Mark New Lab with Groundbreaking Celebration

Equipped with an $8.1 million federal Recovery Act grant and a shovel, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) will celebrate the groundbreaking of its new Laboratory for Ocean Sensors and Observing Systems (LOSOS) at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 4, at the Clark Laboratory on the Institution?s Quissett Campus.

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WHOI Scientist Takes Comprehensive Look at Human Impacts on Ocean Chemistry

Numerous studies are documenting the growing effects of climate change, carbon dioxide, pollution and other human-related phenomena on the world?s oceans. But most of those have studied single, isolated sources of pollution and other influences. Now, a marine geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has published a report in the latest issue of the journal Science that evaluates the total impact of such factors on the ocean and considers what the future might hold.

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Revolutionary Communications System Promises New Generation of Untethered, Undersea Vehicles

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) engineers and scientists are employing a combination of new undersea technologies to re-define how we think of tethered, remotely operated vehicles. Using the 11,000 meter-rated Nereus hybrid remotely operated vehicle (HROV) as a test platform, engineers at WHOI recently demonstrated a new system that integrates acoustics with optics. This achievement, they say, opens the way to new opportunities in communications between untethered remotely operated vehicles (UTROVs) and their human operators?literally ?cutting the cord? for undersea exploration.

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Rita Colwell to speak at MIT/WHOI Joint Program Commencement June 5 at WHOI

Rita R. Colwell, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland and the Johns Hopkins University and former Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), will give the commencement address June 5 at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to the 2010 graduates of the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography and Applied Ocean Sciences and Engineering.

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WHOI’s Amy Bower Wins Unsung Heroine Award

Amy Bower

Inspiration can come from unexpected sources. For Amy Bower, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), it was triggered by a mundane-sounding requirement entitled ?Criterion 2,? part of a standard research grant proposal to the National Science Foundation in 2004.

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WHOI Study Calculates Volume and Depth of the World?s Oceans

How high is the sky? Scientists have a pretty good handle on that one, what with their knowledge of the troposphere, stratosphere an the other ?o-spheres.? Now, thanks to new work headed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), they are closing in on the other half of that age-old query: How deep is the ocean?

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WHOI scientists find ancient asphalt domes off California coast

They paved paradise and, it turns out, actually did put up a parking lot. A big one. Some 700 feet deep in the waters off California?s jewel of a coastal resort, Santa Barbara, sits a group of football-field-sized asphalt domes unlike any other underwater features known to exist. About 35,000 years ago, a series of apparent undersea volcanoes deposited massive flows of petroleum 10 miles offshore. The deposits hardened into domes that were discovered recently by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and UC Santa Barbara (UCSB).

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James E. Cloern Wins Ketchum Award

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has chosen James E. Cloern, a senior research scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey for the last 34 years, as the recipient of the 2010 Bostwick H. Ketchum Award.

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