Ocean Life
A DISCO in the Ocean
To investigate coral bleaching, WHOI scientists figure out a novel way to take direct measurements in the ocean of superoxide, a key molecule that vanishes almost as soon as it is made.
Read MoreDo Microplastics in the Ocean Affect Scallops?
WHOI scientist Scott Gallager is making field observations and conducting lab experiments to explore the possible effects of microplastics in the ocean on marine organisms.
Read MoreEmperor Penguins’ First Journey to Sea
The paper, published Jan. 17, 2019, in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series, also highlights the unique connection between juvenile diving behaviors and a layer of the ocean, known as the thermocline, where warmer surface waters meet cooler deep waters below and where their prey likely gather in groups.
Read MoreFrom the humpback to the Antarctic blue: why do whales sing?
Groups of Pilot Whales Have Their Own Dialects
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 off the coast of Hawai’i have their own sorts of vocal dialects, a discovery that may help researchers understand the whales’ complex social structure.
Read MoreJunk Food
An estimated eight million tons of plastics enter our oceans each year, yet only one percent can be seen floating…
Read MoreCoral Larvae Use Sound to Find a Home on the Reef
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 of a reef, and remains stuck there for the rest of its life. Exactly how these larvae choose a specific place to live, however, is largely unclear.
Read MoreFlounder Now Tumor-free in Boston Harbor
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 Institution (WHOI) has documented a dramatic rebound in flounder health spurred by decades of remediation efforts, including a $3.8 billion project to construct a sewage treatment plant and a 9.5-mile discharge tunnel with a 6,600-foot-long outfall diffuser. The findings appear in the Nov. 20, 2018 issue of the journal Diseases of Aquatic Organisms.
Read MoreThe Secret Tuna Nursery
WHOI biologists and physical oceanographers combine expertise to reveal a place in the ocean where some tuna are born.
Read MoreHow Do Corals Build Their Skeletons?
WHOI scientists discovered precisely how ocean acidification affects coral skeletons’ a factor that will help scientists predict how corals throughout the world will fare as the oceans become more acidic.
Read MoreForecasting Where Ocean Life Thrives
Where do plankton grow more prolifically in the ocean? At “fronts” where different water masses meet. In this case, less-salty,…
Read MoreStudy Tracks Severe Bleaching Events on a Pacific Coral Reef Over Past Century
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 Nino are a way of life. Exactly how these reefs deal with repeated episodes of extreme heat has been unclear. A new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), has uncovered the history of bleaching on a reef in the epicenter of El Nino, revealing how some corals have been able to return after facing extreme conditions. The study was published October 26, 2018, in the journal Communications Biology.
Read MoreFirst Time Out
Postdoctoral investigator Eyal Wurgaft, research assistant Kate Morkeski, and MIT-WHOI Joint Program graduate student Mallory Ringham (left to right) lower…
Read MoreSounds of the Reef
Engineer Rod Catanach sets up a four-channel acoustic recorder to measure coral reef soundscapes—a combination of biological and non-biological sounds…
Read MoreBleached Corals
Hanny Rivera, a graduate student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program, takes a tissue sample from a bleached coral. When ocean…
Read MoreThe Living Breathing Ocean
Rainforests have been dubbed the Earth’s lung, but like us, our planet has two lungs. The second one is the ocean.
Read MoreA Lobster Trap for Microbes
What if you wanted to observe what microbes in the ocean are doing? First, you lure them into your field of view.
Read MoreSearching for ‘Super Reefs’
Some corals are less vulnerable to ocean acidification. Can the offspring from these more resilient corals travel to other reefs to help sustain more vulnerable coral populations there?
Read MorePodcast: Using Philanthropy to Explore the World’s Oceans
Quotes Mark Abbott
Journey to the Bottom of the Sea
My eyelids were tightly pressed down as I mustered all the tricks I could think of to get myself to…
Read MoreLooking for Resilience
WHOI coral scientists Anne Cohen and Pat Lohmann extract core samples from a coral during a recent cruise to Kiritimati…
Read MoreThe Unseen World on Coral Reefs
We have learned that microbial communities on and within us—a microbiome—keep people healthy. Corals reefs also have their own microbiomes that they couldn’t function without.
Read MoreCanyon Explorers
Yesterday, on the second anniversary of the founding of the Northeast Canyons and Seamounts National Monument, WHOI deep-sea biologist Tim…
Read MoreWHOI’s First Ocean Twilight Zone Expedition
The Ocean Twilight Zone abounds with life but has remained largely unexplored. A team of researchers led by WHOI acoustic…
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