Ocean Life
Beauty in Motion
A white tern (Gygis alba) takes flight on Midway Island in the South Pacific. The birds nest on coral islands…
Read MoreBaby Pictures
The tiny offspring of two species of deep-sea corals from Antarctica changed from shapeless larvae (left) into tiny, tentacled corals…
Read MoreCore-al Samples
Jessica Carilli, a graduate student from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, holds two core samples that she and WHOI marine…
Read MoreEavesdropping on Whales’ Mealtime Conversation
Like a knife slicing through denim, the black dorsal fin broke the surface of the icy water quickly, and then…
Read MoreInnovative Tagging Technique May Help Researchers Better Protect Fish Stocks
Simon Thorrold, a fish ecologist from WHOI, has received a new research grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to use harmless chemical tags to track the dispersal of the larvae of coral reef fishes in the western Pacific Ocean.
Read MoreCatch of the Day
Postdoctoral fellow Rhian Waller holds a bundle of tubeworms collected during a seafloor dive by scientists in the Alvin submersible…
Read MoreFollowing Whales Up a Creek
Michael Moore is accustomed to working solo (or nearly so) in remote places, but this was a very public endeavor.…
Read MoreThe Deepest Divers
For years, sperm whales and elephant seals were thought to hold world records for holding their breath under water. But…
Read MoreCannonball or Cabbage?
This specimen of Stomolophus meleagrisaka “cannonball jellies” or “cabbage head jellies”was captured for study from the waters around the Liquid…
Read MoreWhat Does It Take To Break a Whale?
The ship hit the whale with a force that snapped her 14-foot jawbone like a toothpick and left a 4-foot-long…
Read MoreGrowing Marine Plants Need Their Vitamins
Your mother was right: You need your vitamins. And that turns out to be true for life in the oceans,…
Read MoreRice in a Snow Storm
Biology graduate student Kristen Whalen inspects a gorgonian (also known as a soft coral or sea fan) for a specialist…
Read MoreSlug-fest
Brightly colored slugs feed on a variety of sea whips and sea fans that populate tropical coral reefs. “They munch…
Read MoreOceanic Storms Create Oases in the Watery Desert
A research team led by Dennis McGillicuddy of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has shown that episodic, swirling current systems known as eddies act to pump nutrients up from the deep ocean to fuel such blooms.
Read MoreCoral Reef Fish Make Their Way Home
Coral reef fish hatchlings dispersed by ocean currents are able to make their way back to their home reefs again…
Read MoreStill Toxic After All These Years
This is a story about persistence—of oil, and of people. It began in 1969 when the barge Florida ran aground…
Read MoreBuried, Residual Oil is Still Affecting Wildlife Decades After a Spill
Nearly four decades after a fuel oil spill polluted the beaches of Cape Cod, researchers have found the first compelling…
Read MoreRising Above It All
WHOI researchers were treated to a spectacular view of 2000 meters of mountain meeting 500 m of sea water in…
Read MoreCell-sized Thermometers
Climate shifts are a repeating feature in Earth’s history, but humans have added so much greenhouse gas (especially carbon dioxide)…
Read MoreSeafloor bacteria are multi-tasking with the carbon cycle
Scientists have long known that microorganisms can use one of two different methods to convert carbon dioxide into a form…
Read MoreSlice of History
A slice through the center of a long-dead brain coral is a slice through human and ocean history. This 1,000-pound…
Read MoreDead Corals Do Tell Tales
Sometime around the beginning of the 17th century, a tiny drifting larva found the perfect piece of real estate to…
Read MoreWhales
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Read MoreThe Hagfish Capture
Pilot Bruce Strickrott maneuvers the submersible Alvin toward a new species of deep-sea hagfish and captures it with a suction…
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