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Engineering


Titanic debris-field

First map of Titanic shipwreck debris field, provides a detailed layout of the scattered remains, seafloor/ocean characteristics and existing photographs.

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Anatomy of a rip current

Waves push water toward shore, but it escapes fast through narrow gaps—rip currents form as water funnels out to sea through these hidden channels.

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Can AI help us explore the ocean?

Curious Robot

Learn how scientists at WHOI are using AI, like the software “Spock,” to enable autonomous underwater robots, such as Nereid Under Ice and CUREE, to study marine life and explore ocean environments.

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What are ocean robots?

Sentry

From the icy poles to sensitive coral reefs, robots empower us to understand more of the ocean than ever before. But just what are they?

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Iron Fertilization

Iron fertilization illustration

Iron fertilization is a technique that would artificially add iron to the ocean's surface, triggering massive blooms of phytoplankton that could remove substantial amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

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Abyssal Zone

The abyssal zone, or the abyss, is the seafloor and water column from 3,000 to 6,500 meters (9,842 to 21,325 feet) depth, where sunlight doesn't penetrate.

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Ocean Alkalinity

carbon dioxide removal conceptual graphic

When alkalinity reacts with carbon dioxide in the ocean, it converts it to a form that can't readily return to the atmosphere as carbon dioxide gas.

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Seaweed Cultivation

harvesting kelp at an aquaculture farm

When seaweed removes carbon dioxide from seawater, it alters the balance of carbon dioxide between water and air, causing the gas to move from the atmosphere into the ocean.

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Ocean-Based Climate Solutions

Ocean-based, clean energy technologies hold great potential for ocean-based climate solutions, such as blue carbon, biofuels, and carbon dioxide removal systems.

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Ocean Warming

ship and ice

Increasing ocean heat is closely linked to increases in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations, making the ocean an excellent indicator of how much Earth is warming.

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Exploring Ocean Worlds

Ocean worlds may be common in our galaxy. Modeling and exoplanet discoveries suggest many planets could have oceans, some hidden beneath icy shells.

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Antikythera Shipwreck

A research team exploring the Antikythera shipwreck in 2012

The site of the Antikythera Wreck holds the remains of a Greek trading or cargo ship dating from the First Century, BCE. It is located on the east side of the Greek island of Antikythera.

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Acoustics

Topography of the Havre caldera. Credit: Rebecca Carey, University of Tasmania, Adam Soule, WHOI, © Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

A strong understanding of how sound behaves in different conditions in the ocean helps scientists answer fundamental questions about the planet, the ocean, and marine life.

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Sea Ice

The U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Healy moves through pancake ice in the Arctic's Chukchi Sea.

Sea ice is frozen seawater floating on the surface of the ocean. Sea ice is formed entirely in the ocean, unlike icebergs, which originate from land-based sources like glaciers and ice sheets.

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Glaciers & Ice Sheets

Glaciers are large ice masses created by snowfall that has transformed into ice and compressed over the course of many years. An ice sheet is a mass of glacial land ice extending more than 20,000 square miles.

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Seafloor Mining

The ocean contains a complex combination of processes that sometimes result in commercially viable forms of a wide range of minerals.

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Aquaculture

(Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Aquaculture is the farming in fresh and saltwater environments of aquatic animals or plants principally for food. Fish, mollusks, crustaceans, and kelp are a few examples.

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Sea Level Rise

sea washing onto road

Sea level rise is expected to continue for centuries and may impact human and the natural environment.

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Paleoclimatology

blue hole in bahamas

Understanding how climate naturally varied over thousands and millions of years teaches us how Earth's climate system works and sheds light on current, human-induced changes.

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