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Seafloor & Below

Finding answers in the ocean

The test being used to diagnose the novel coronavirus—and other pandemics like AIDS and SARS—was developed with the help of an enzyme isolated from a microbe found in marine hydrothermal vents as well as freshwater hot springs.

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Move Over, Mars: The Search for Life on Saturn’s Largest Moon

October 17, 2020
Nautilus
nautilus logo

“The great thing about hydrothermal vents is that they provide a lot of energy sources for microbial life that doesn’t include sunlight,” says Julie Huber, a marine chemist at WHOI. Organisms living at hydrothermal vents on Earth’s seafloors, she explains, “can use chemical energy, so that means things like sulphur, iron, hydrogen and methane and they create a base of the food chain.”

Move Over, Mars: The Search for Life on Saturn’s Largest Moon

October 16, 2020
Nautilus

Alien microbes could be flourishing in the underground seas of Titan and the solar system’s other ocean worlds. “The great thing about hydrothermal vents is that they provide a lot of energy sources for microbial life that doesn’t include sunlight,” says Julie Huber, a marine chemist at WHOI.

A New Ship’s Mission: Let the Deep Sea Be Seen

September 17, 2020
New York Times
new york times

Mr. Dalio was thinking of buying the Alucia when a team of WHOI experts used the vessel and an undersea robot to find the shattered remains of Air France Flight 447, which in 2009 had vanished over the South Atlantic with 228 passengers. Other search teams had failed, and Mr. Dalio saw the 2011 success as an indication of the field’s exploratory promise.

Life on an Ocean World

September 17, 2020

One of the most enduring questions humans have been asking for millennia is, “Are we alone in the Universe?” Now, we may have the opportunity to answer that question within the lifetime of the current human generation.

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Why we explore deep-water canyons off our coast

September 16, 2020
deep water corals

WHOI biologist Tim Shank joins NOAA Fisheries, the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, the National Ocean Service, and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean (MARCO) to study the ecological diversity and economic value laden in the 90 underwater canyons along the northeast U.S. continental shelf

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The Underwater United States – virtual event recording

June 29, 2020

A virtual journey hosted by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Mid-Atlantic Regional Council on the Ocean into the submarine canyons off the U.S. East Coast and how they play an important role in a healthy marine ecosystem in a critical part of U.S. territorial waters.

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One Small Step: From Life on the Seafloor to Life Beyond Earth

A team of WHOI researchers and colleagues use a decision-making robot to explore Kolumbo volcano—an ancient submarine volcano sitting 500 meters below the surface off Greece’s Santorini Island in the Aegean Sea. The expedition was part of a NASA-funded program that will attempt to answer a number of key questions: What can the organisms living in the extremes of this dark and chemical-laden underworld tell us about life on Earth and beyond?

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Scientists are trying to save coral reefs. Here’s what’s working.

June 4, 2020
National Geographic

Without a mix of long-term cuts in emissions and short-term innovation, there’s a not-so-far-off future where coral reefs as we know them simply cease to exist, says Anne Cohen, a coral expert at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.