News Releases
Hurricanes and the Coastal Zone
With hurricane season arriving June 1, along with predictions of an above normal number of major storms in the Atlantic and Gulf States, understanding how the ocean and atmospheric interact…
Read MoreWHOI Scientists Monitor Largest Red Tide Outbreak in 12 Years in Massachusetts Bay
With shellfish beds from Maine to the Cape Cod coast closed from the largest outbreak of red tide in 12 years in Massachusetts Bay, scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic…
Read MoreDeep-Sea Tremors May Provide Early Warning System for Larger Earthquakes
Predicting when large earthquakes might occur may be a step closer to reality, thanks to a new study of undersea earthquakes in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The study, reported in today??A’s Nature, is the first to suggest that small seismic shocks or foreshocks preceding a major earthquake can be used in some cases to predict the main tremors.
Read MoreAssessing Algerian Earthquake Risk
Scientists from WHOI and USGS Menlo Park will be assessing future earthquake risk in Algeria and training Algerian researchers under a new two-year project funded by the Office of Foreign…
Read MoreMajor Caribbean Earthquakes and Tsunamis a Real Risk
A dozen major earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have occurred in the Caribbean near Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the island of Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and…
Read MoreTsunami Warning Buoy Deployed off Chile
Scientists from the Chilean Navy Hydrographic and Oceanographic Office (SHOA), in cooperation with the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), deployed a SHOA tsunami warning buoy off Northern Chile in the…
Read MoreClues from Past Hurricanes Help Assess Future Storm Risks
Reconstructing the history and intensity of hurricanes is useful when assessing future risks of these extreme events in coastal regions. Previous studies of North Atlantic hurricane activity have identified many…
Read MoreMonitoring Undersea Earthquakes, Deep Sea Tides and Magnetic Fields
One of the largest known mineral deposits in the deep sea, the Tag hydrothermal site on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (MAR) in the North Atlantic Ocean, was the subject of a…
Read MoreOil Found in Marsh Sediments 30 Years After Spill
Thirty years after approximately 175,000 gallons of No. 2 fuel oil spilled from the barge FLORIDA in Buzzards Bay near West Falmouth, MA, residues of the oil can still be found in salt marsh sediments, according to a report to be released November 15 by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and colleagues at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. Their findings, to appear in the journal Environmental Science and Technology published by the American Chemical Society, provide further evidence that oil persists in the marine environment for a long period of time even though the surface sediments recover quickly and appear visually healthy.
Read MoreUndersea Cracks along Continental Shelf Could Trigger Tsunamis along U.S. East Coast
Potential landslides on the outer continental shelf and slope along the Mid-Atlantic coast could trigger tsunamis that might have devastating effects on populated coastal areas. In a paper published in the May 2000 issue of the journal Geology,Neal Driscoll of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and colleagues Jeffrey Weissel of Columbia University??A?s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and John Goff of the University of Texas at Austin say newly discovered cracks along the edge of the continental shelf could be an early warning sign that the seafloor is unstable in these areas.