Marine Mammals
In Forgotten Whalebones, the Past is Remembered and Recorded
Scientific (and Surfing) Safari
Eric Montie has a great tan, photos of huge waves taped above his computer, and a penchant for grabbing his short…
Read MoreWhale Necropsy at Sea
Big Whale, Big Sharks, Big Stink
A shipping tanker first spotted the whale on Sept. 9 about 24 miles southeast of Nantucket, Mass. It floated belly…
Read MoreWhale Necropsy at Sea
In and Out of Harm’s Way
Just a few more miles or a few more minutes. That’s what scientists and some federal managers think it would…
Read MoreA Whale Expert is Called in to Decipher Odd Elephant Calls
An article about work done by WHOI postdoctoral investigator Stephanie Watwood to analyze atypical sounds made by two African elephants, one imitating a truck and one the calls of another elephant species
Read MoreEndangered North Atlantic Right Whale Study Says Population in Crisis
Ship strikes and entanglement in fishing gear are threatening the survival of the North Atlantic right whale, one of the…
Read MoreWhat is That in the Water?
As summer vacations approach, beachgoers might want to bring along a guide to what they and their children will see…
Read MoreOcean Life Institute
The oceans cover 70 percent of the planet?s surface and constitute 99 percent of its living space, and every drop of ocean water holds living things. Without its oceans, Earth would be a rock in space, and life may never have appeared on our planet.
Read MoreHow to See What Whales Hear
On summer nights, if you sit quietly at the edge of a field or watch the edges of the light…
Read MoreA Lone Voice Crying in the Watery Wilderness
And speaking of whales, here is a story of whales speaking—or more precisely, one whale, with its own, distinctive 52-hertz voice.
Read MoreEven Sperm Whales Get the Bends
It seemed only natural for deep-diving sperm whales to be immune from decompression illness, or the bends?the painful, sometimes fatal condition that human divers suffer when they surface too rapidly. But the whales may be as susceptible as land mammals, according to a new study by WHOI biologists.
Read MorePlaying Tag with Whales
The challenge of designing a device to learn what marine mammals do on dives is the stuff of dreams for an electronics engineer.
Read MoreRun Deep, But Not Silent
For the first time in history, we can accompany a whale on its dive, hear what it hears, and observe its normal, natural, previously hidden behavior in the depths. Working closely together, scientists and engineers have created an innovative new device—the digital acoustic recording tag, or D-tag. It attaches to a living whale and records nearly everything that happens on its dives, without disturbing the animal.
Read MoreMistaken Identity
Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have found that two chemicals accumulating in the tissues of marine animals and suspected to be manmade pollutants actually came from natural sources.
Read MoreRed Tides and Dead Zones
The most widespread, chronic environmental problem in the coastal ocean is caused by an excess of chemical nutrients. Over the past century, a wide range of human activities—the intensification of agriculture, waste disposal, coastal development, and fossil fuel use—has substantially increased the discharge of nitrogen, phosphorus, and other nutrients into the environment. These nutrients are moved around by streams, rivers, groundwater, sewage outfalls, and the atmosphere and eventually end up in the ocean.
Read MoreScientists Muster to Help Right Whales
It is a sad irony that we have cataloged individual photographs of the remaining North Atlantic right whales and given each of them unique numbers and sometimes names, yet still know too little about their physiology, behavior, and habitats to take effective steps toward ensuring their survival as a species.
Read MoreWhither the North Atlantic Right Whale?
“Today only a remnant of the population survives, no more than 350 whales clustered in calving and feeding grounds along the eastern seaboard of North America. Only occasional right whale sightings in the Gulf of St. Lawrence or in the waters between Iceland, Greenland, and Norway give echoes of their once substantially greater range.
Read MoreWhere Currents Collide and Marine Mammals Gather
Cape Hatteras, where the Gulf Stream veers off the continental slope into the deep ocean and heads toward Europe, will…
Read MoreEndangered North Atlantic Right Whale Study Shows Sharp Decline in Mothers
Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) report in today’s issue of the journal Nature that the population growth rate of North Atlantic Right whales has declined below replacement level because of increased mortality rates of mothers. The population numbers only about 300 and is predicted to become extinct within 200 years if the environmental conditions experienced by the whales in 1995 were maintained.
Read MoreStudy to Assess Risk Factors of Vessel Collisions with Endangered Northern Right Whales
Scientists and engineers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and their colleagues will use a new digital recording tag to study and assess the risk factors of vessel collisions with the endangered Northern right whale. Less than 300 of the whales remain.
Read MoreNew Model Suggests Northern Right Whale Population on Path to Extinction
The North Atlantic northern right whale, considered to be the most endangered large whale species, is headed for extinction unless human intervention improves survival, according to a new study by researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the University of Massachusetts, Boston (UMASS Boston). Their report, the first to obtain rigorous statistical estimates of survival probability of this population, was published today in the “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.”
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