Media Tip Sheet – December 2025

DECEMBER 2025 MEDIA TIP SHEET

Welcome to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s media tip sheet. Our goal is to provide an advanced or detailed look at stories we believe are impactful or trending and offer WHOI experts if you’re interested in a deeper dive.

WHOI selected by NASA to help lead search for life in the solar system’s hidden oceans

NASA has tapped  WHOI to lead a five-year project to help answer one of the biggest questions in space science: Is there life beyond Earth? The Investigating Ocean Worlds (InvOW) project will dig into how organic molecules, the building blocks of life, form and change on ocean worlds, like Jupiter’s icy moon Europa and Saturn’s counterpart, Enceladus. This work comes ahead of NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft’s arrival at Europa in 2030, where it will send back data helping scientists separate real biosignatures from cosmic background noise. Researchers are available for interviews.

Blast off with this story in the WHOI Press Room.

Get in the holiday spirit by raising a glass to Champagne, a North Atlantic right whale, and her newborn calf! 

On November 28, 2025, the first mom-calf pair of the 2025-2026 season was seen off the coast of South Carolina. With fewer than 400 individuals left, each new calf offers hope for this critically endangered species. Understanding their health can inform policy and conservation efforts to protect them.

A new WHOI-led study explores how the whales’ respiratory droplets can be used to monitor their health. Over the course of eight years, researchers collected 103 respiratory samples from 85 North Atlantic right whales using drones. The researchers found that the microbial matter whales exhale through their blowholes carries valuable information about their health, including distinct, individual patterns that can be linked to characteristics such as robust versus thin whales. Researchers are available for interviews.

Catch a breath with the full story in the WHOI Press Room.

Images and videos available for use with credit can be found here. 

Scientists find hidden methane springs 2,700 meters down in the Arctic

Scientists from WHOI and partner institutions have discovered a previously unknown diffuse venting field in the Fram Strait, the passage between Greenland and Svalbard. Using the advanced remotely operated vehicle ROV ÆGIR 6000 and WHOI’s SAGE (Sensor for Aqueous Gases in the Environment) methane sensor, researchers confirmed the presence of methane in the vent fluids. Unlike traditional hydrothermal vents that form chimneys and release jets of hot water, the Frigg vent field features small openings in the rock that emit fluids, creating habitats for specialized deep-sea organisms adapted to cold, methane-rich environments. Researchers are available for interviews.

Learn more about the methane-rich find in the WHOI Press Room. 

Photos available for use with credit can be found here. 

On the December Calendar:

December 4: Wildlife Conservation Day

December 7: Catch WHOI in the Falmouth Holiday Parade

December 11: International Mountains Day- Seamounts are mountains too!

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