WHOI in the News
North Atlantic right whales ‘could be extinct within 20 years’ as krill they eat migrate away due to climate change and commercial fishing impacts their habitat
A comprehensive new study of North Atlantic right whales has found the species is significantly smaller and less healthy than southern right whales and could be wiped out in the next 20 years without intervention.
Archaeology: How historians were stunned by shipwreck skeleton in ‘incredible condition’
The startling find was made in 2016 by a group of archaeologists led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Hellenic Ministry of Culture and Sports.
Plankton-seeking oceanographic probe plunges to the inky depths
Developed by a team from MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the device is known as the EcoCTD.
Towable sensor free-falls to measure vertical slices of ocean conditions
Now researchers at MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have engineered a lightweight instrument that measures both physical and biological features of the vertical ocean over small, kilometer-wide patches.
Marine Biologist and Inventor John Kanwisher Dies
He coinvented the first electronically controlled diving rebreather, measured the first electrocardiogram from a whale, and played a central role in transforming the study of animal physiology from the lab to the wild through the use of telemetry devices he invented.
The Long-Lasting Legacy of Deep-Sea
Mining for rare metals can involve a good amount of detective work. It can take time and skill to find the most abundant sources. But in the deep ocean, metallic deposits sit atop the seafloor in full view—a tantalizing sight for those interested in harvesting polymetallic nodules.
The Last Place on Earth We’d Ever Expect to Find Life
Microbial life, almost unbelievably resilient, abides in boiling hot springs and bone-dry deserts, in pools of acid and polar ice, kilometers up into the sky and kilometers below the ocean floor.
Study Shows Wetter Climate Is Likely To Intensify Global Warming
A study in the May 6th issue of Nature indicates the increase in rainfall forecast by global climate models is likely to hasten the release of carbon dioxide from tropical soils, further intensifying global warming by adding to human emissions of this greenhouse gas into Earth’s atmosphere.
As ice melts, emperor penguins march toward extinction
‘A risk for the future’: How warming oceans are disrupting America’s seafood supply
Recorded temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean are increasing at an “alarming” rate, according to one scientist, and forcing fisherman to confront a seafood industry primed for disruption.
Conserving the Nature of the Northeast
Aquaculturists have not yet figured out how to breed adult eels in captivity. That means most of the eels we consume, about 95 percent, were actually born in the wild and intercepted as juvenile “glass eels” at the mouths of rivers during their migration inland in the spring.
Study shows wetter climate is likely to intensify global warming
Killifish Hint at Genetic Basis for Human Toxicant Susceptibility
Killifish populations have adapted to survive and reproduce in polluted waters. Researchers have studied the evolutionary and genetic basis for this adaptation, discovering that it comes with a cost.
Caldera Chronicles: Yellowstone helps scientists’ understanding of nitrogen
In the air we breathe, oxygen plays an obvious and important role, but it is not the most abundant gas in the atmosphere. That honor belongs to nitrogen. But where did this nitrogen come from?
Shark Attack Kills Surfer in Northern California
Another casualty of the coronavirus: scientific research
With much of the world still shut down, the coronavirus has hampered the painstaking work of many scientists whose findings rely on regularly collected data and seasonal experiments.
NASA Scientists train in Nevada Desert to remotely control Mars Perseverance Rover
Wetter climate to trigger global warming feedback loop in the tropics
As the tropics get wetter, as many climate models predict, soils are likely to experience greater rates of respiration and decomposition, limiting the carbon storage abilities of tropical soils and intensifying global warming.
Covid-19 Forces Spring Science Field Work to Go Fallow
Carin Ashjian, a senior scientist at WHOI, was one of 97 scientists and crew members aboard a German oceanographic research vessel that has been deliberately stranded in Arctic Sea ice as part of the year-long MOSAIC experiment.
Endangered North Atlantic right whales return to Canadian waters
For North Atlantic right whales as individuals, and as a species, things are going terribly wrong,” said Michael Moore from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
In another significant ruling for right whales, a federal judge rules that Massachusetts is violating the Endangered Species Act
Michael Moore, director of the Marine Mammal Center at WHOI, lauded the ruling, saying the “judge understands the simple truth that if there is rope in the water column, and whales come and go in the region, entanglement risk is real, and significant in terms of mortality and morbidity, especially for reproductive success.”
The Deepwater Horizon Disaster Fueled a Gulf Science Bonanza
Chris Reddy is an expert in oil spill science who in 2010 helped determine the size, heading, and chemical composition of the underwater plume from an oceanographic research vessel and underwater robot near the Macondo well site, about 80 miles south of New Orleans.
We study shipwrecks to find overlooked history. With COVID-19, we see it right now.
Op ed coauthored by Calvin Mires, a maritime archaeologist and Research Associate at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachussetts.