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Japan Earthquake Appears to Increase Quake Risk Elsewhere in the Country

Japan’s recent magnitude 9.0 earthquake, which triggered a devastating tsunami, relieved stress along part of the quake fault but also has contributed to the build up of stress in other areas, putting some of the country at risk for up to years of sizeable aftershocks and perhaps new main shocks, scientists say.

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WHOI to Host Public Forum on Seafood Security

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) will host a public forum on May 25 from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. in Redfield Auditorium on the theme “The Seafood Dilemma: Does it Matter Where We Get Our Seafood? The Balance of US Production, Imports, Wild Capture, and Aquaculture in US Seafood Supply.”

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Emerging Explorers Award to WHOI’s Kakani Katija

Kakani Katija

Kakani Katija, a postdoctoral scholar at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), has been selected as one of 14 National Geographic Emerging Explorers for 2011 for her investigation into the role swimming animals might play in mixing and moving the oceans and other large bodies of water.

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Eddies Found to be Deep, Powerful Modes of Ocean Transport

Researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and their colleagues have discovered that massive, swirling ocean eddies—known to be up to 500 kilometers across at the surface—can reach all the way to the ocean bottom at mid-ocean ridges, some 2,500 meters deep, transporting tiny sea creatures, chemicals, and heat from hydrothermal vents over large distances.

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Prey-tell: Why Right Whales Linger in the Gulf of Maine

WHOI’s Mark Baumgartner finds that the location, the length of stay, and perhaps the very abundance of the whales may be dependent on an interesting vertical migration pattern by the copepods on which the whales feed. It seems to be a case, he said, of “how the behavior of the prey influences the behavior of the whales.”

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WHOI-led Team Locates Air France Wreckage

A search team led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has located the wreckage of Air France Flight 447 some 3,900 meters, or nearly 2.5 miles, below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean off Brazil’s northeastern coast.

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WHOI Conducts Latest Search for Air France Flight 447

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is again teaming with French authorities to renew the international search for the deep-sea wreck site of Air France Flight 447 and to retrieve the flight recorders from the Airbus A 330.

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WHOI-Led Report Links Sonar to Whale Strandings

An international team of researchers reports in a paper led by WHOI’s Peter Tyack the first data on how beaked whales respond to naval sonar exercises. Their results suggest that sonar indeed affects the behavior and movement of whales.

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On the Sizeable Wings of Albatrosses

An oceanographer may be offering the best explanation yet of one of the great mysteries of flight—how albatrosses fly such vast distances, even around the world, almost without flapping their wings. The answer, says Philip L. Richardson of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), lies in a concept called dynamic soaring, in which the large bird utilizes the power of above-ocean wind shear while tacking like an airborne sailboat.

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WHOI Experts Stress Lessons From Japan Earthquake

While Japan’s 9.0-magnitude earthquake and accompanying tsunami represent a devastating natural disaster for the country’s residents, scientists should also seize upon the massive temblor as an important learning tool for future quakes around the world, including the Pacific Northwest coast of the United States, according to experts from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

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First Harmful Algal Bloom Species Genome Sequenced

The microscopic phytoplankton Aureococcus anophagefferens, which causes devastating brown tides, may be tiny but it’s a fierce competitor. In the first genome sequencing of a harmful algal bloom species, researchers…

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Pollution Triggers Genetic Resistance Mechanism in a Coastal Fish

For 30 years, two General Electric facilities released about 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) into New YorkA?s Hudson River, devastating and contaminating fish populations. Some 50 years later, one type of fishA?the Atlantic tomcodA?has not only survived but appears to be thriving in the hostile Hudson environment.

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Hal Caswell Wins Humboldt Research Award

Hal Caswell

Hal Caswell, a senior scientist in the Biology Department at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), was awarded a 2010 Humboldt Research Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Bonn,…

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