Biogeochemistry
WHOI Scientist Receives Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Marine Microbiology Initiative Investigator Award
Mak Saito, a biogeochemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has been selected for a Marine Microbiology Initiative (MMI) investigator award…
Read MoreBacteria Exhibit Altruistic Behavior
When it comes to bacteria protecting themselves, it’s all in the family. A new study shows that marine bacteria can…
Read MoreThe Ocean’s Tiny Chemists
Once as I was flying cross-country over the middle of the United States, the woman in the seat next to…
Read MoreResearchers from WHOI and MBL Receive $1.2 Million Grant for Collaborative Salt-Marsh Study
Scientists from the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) were recently awarded a $1.2 million collaborative grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for studies on the role of sulfur-oxidizing bacteria in salt marsh nitrogen and carbon cycling. The fieldwork will be conducted at the Plum Island Ecosystem Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site on the North Shore of Boston.
Read MoreRecycling Rare, Essential Nutrients in the Sea
In the vast ocean where an essential nutrient—iron—is scarce, a marine bacterium that launches the ocean food web survives by…
Read MoreThe Mercury Cycle
Mercury cycles from Earth’s crust to the air to the ocean and back to land. In the ocean, top predator…
Read MoreHow Does Toxic Mercury Get into Fish?
Most everyone has heard by now that we should limit our consumption of certain fish because they accumulate high levels…
Read MoreSun, Sand, Waves…and Bacteria?
Elizabeth Halliday spent her summer at the beach, but she wasn’t swimming or sunbathing. Instead, the MIT/WHOI Joint Program student…
Read MoreCara Manning
One of Cara Manning’s hobbies is cooking, which seems compatible for a chemist, right? “Some of my nonscientist friends are…
Read MoreExploring an Icy, Invisible Realm in Antarctica
They may be microscopic in size, but plankton play a starring role in the oceans’ food web and the Earth’s…
Read MoreTurning Carbon Dioxide Gas into Rock
By Ari Daniel :: Originally published online October 22, 2009
Read MorePhytoplankton Cell Membranes Challenge Fundamentals of Biochemistry
Get ready to send the biology textbooks back to the printer. In a new paper published in Nature, Benjamin Van…
Read MoreAnother Greenhouse Gas to Watch: Nitrous Oxide
There’s a greenhouse gas whose concentration is on the rise because of human activities. But it’s not the one you’d…
Read MoreThe Spiral Secret to Mammal Hearing
For Graduate Student, Research Is a Gas
When you spend 40 days on a ship in the South Atlantic, enduring equipment failures, icebergs, and the occasional surly…
Read MoreDMS: The Climate Gas You’ve Never Heard Of
For generations of mariners, a tangy, almost sweet odor served as a signal that land was nearby. What sailors called…
Read MoreWHOI Scientists Earn Laurels
WHOI geochemist Stanley Hart is the 13th recipient of the Arthur L. Day Prize and Lectureship, awarded by the U.S.…
Read MoreLost City Pumps Life-essential Chemicals at Rates Unseen at Typical Black Smokers
Hydrocarbons—molecules critical to life—are routinely generated by the simple interaction of seawater with the rocks under the Lost City hydrothermal…
Read MoreResearchers Find Substantial Amount of Mercury Entering the Ocean through Groundwater
Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have found a new and substantial pathway for mercury pollution flowing into coastal waters. Marine chemists have detected much more dissolved mercury entering the ocean through groundwater than from atmospheric and river sources.
Read MoreScientists Find Unusual Use of Metals in the Ocean
Cadmium, commonly considered a toxic metal and often used in combination with nickel in batteries, has been found to have…
Read MoreLiving Large in Microscopic Nooks
Newly discovered deep-sea microbes rearrange thinking on the evolution of the Eart—and life on it.
Read MoreA River Runs Through It
Interactive by Eric Taylor, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Read MoreExtreme Trapping
One of oceanography’s major challenges is collection of data from extraordinarily difficult environments. For those who use sediments traps, two examples of difficult environments are the deepest oceans and the permanently ice-covered Arctic Basin.
Read MoreThe Rain of Ocean Particles and Earth’s Carbon Cycle
WHOI Phytoplankton photosynthesis has provided Earth’s inhabitants with oxygen since early life began. Without this process the atmosphere would consist of carbon dioxide (CO2) plus a small amount of nitrogen, the atmospheric pressure would be 60 times higher than the air we breathe, and the planet’s air temperatures would hover around 300°C. (Conditions similar to these are found on Earth’s close sibling Venus.
Read More