Press Room
Scientists, engineers, vehicle operators, and ship crew from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) will be a featured part of the upcoming BBC program “Blue Planet Live,” which will air over four nights beginning March 24. The series will include...
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has selected Court Clayton, an expert in fundraising and philanthropic giving, as the Institution’s new Chief Development Officer (CDO). Clayton brings two decades of frontline fundraising and management experience to WHOI within higher education and...
Members of the Massachusetts Seaport Economic Council (SEC) gave the green-light to a $1 million grant proposal from the Town of Falmouth and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). The SEC, chaired by Lieutenant Governor Karyn Polito, promotes economic growth in...
The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (MOC)—a deep-ocean process that plays a critical role in regulating Earth’s climate—is primarily driven by cooling waters west of Europe, finds a new international study published Feb. 1 in Science. In the Atlantic MOC, warm,...
Far below the ocean floor, sediments are teeming with bizarre zombie-like microbes. Although they’re technically alive, they grow in slow motion, and can take decades for a single cell to divide—something their cousins at the surface do in a matter...
Emperor penguin chicks hatch into one of Earth’s most inhospitable places—the frozen world of Antarctica. Childhood in this environment is harsh and lasts only about five months, when their formerly doting parents leave the fledglings to fend for themselves. New...
The ocean has a long memory. When the water in today’s deep Pacific Ocean last saw sunlight, Charlemagne was the Holy Roman Emperor, the Song Dynasty ruled China and Oxford University had just held its very first class. During that...
Sea levels are rising globally from ocean warming and melting of land ice, but the seas aren’t rising at the same rate everywhere. Sea levels have risen significantly faster in some U.S. East Coast regions compared to others. A new...
In humans, different social groups, cities, or regions often have distinct accents and dialects. Those vocal traits are not unique to us, however. A new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has found that short-finned pilot whales living...
Choosing a place to call home is one of the most consequential choices a coral can make. In the animal’s larval stage, it floats freely in the ocean—but once it settles down, it anchors itself permanently to the rocky substrate...
Surface melting across Greenland’s mile-thick ice sheet began increasing in the mid-19th century and then ramped up dramatically during the 20th and early 21st centuries, showing no signs of abating, according to new research published Dec. 5, 2018, in the...
In the late 1980s, more than three-quarters of the winter flounder caught in Boston Harbor—one of the most polluted harbors in America—showed signs of liver disease, many of them with cancerous tumors. But now, a scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic...
“Alvin revolutionized our understanding of the extremes that life can tolerate and caused us to re-think the origin of life on our planet.” – Adam Soule, NDSF Chief Scientist Alvin, the country’s only deep-diving research submersible capable of carrying humans...
More than 4,000 years ago, the Harappa culture thrived in the Indus River Valley of what is now modern Pakistan and northwestern India, where they built sophisticated cities, invented sewage systems that predated ancient Rome’s, and engaged in long-distance trade...
As climate change causes ocean temperatures to rise, coral reefs worldwide are experiencing mass bleaching events and die-offs. For many, this is their first encounter with extreme heat. However for some reefs in the central Pacific, heatwaves caused by El...
A new system using next-generation robotic sensors to monitor coastal waters for disease-causing microalgae has been funded by the NOAA Sea Grant Program as part of a national strategic investment in aquaculture. The PhytO-ARM (Phytoplankton Observing for Automated...
Each year, fishermen harvest more than $500 million worth of Atlantic sea scallops from the waters off the east coast of the United States. A new model created by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), however, predicts that...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it has awarded a coalition of academic and oceanographic research organizations a five-year, $220 million contract to operate and maintain the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). The coalition, led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic...
Scientists have known for years that warming global climate is melting the Greenland Ice Sheet, the second largest ice sheet in the world. A new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), however, shows that the rate of melting...
The National Science Foundation (NSF) and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), one of the National Institutes of Health, have announced that the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) will receive funding to continue operating the Woods Hole Center for...