Skip to content

Research Highlights

Oceanus Magazine

Armed and Dexterous

Armed and Dexterous

June 11, 2009

Matt Heintz is a research engineer in the Deep Submergence Lab at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). He started his career at WHOI as a pilot for the human-occupied submersible Alvin. In 1999, he began developing the second iteration of…

2,000 Batteries Under the Sea

2,000 Batteries Under the Sea

June 5, 2009

Daniel Gomez-Ibañez has been an engineer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution for three years. Much of that time, he has spent developing large batteries for underwater vehicles, including Nereus. [Second in a series of interviews with five WHOI engineers who…

Miles Under the Sea, Hanging on by Hair-Thin Fiber

Miles Under the Sea, Hanging on by Hair-Thin Fiber

June 4, 2009

Andy Bowen has been developing robotic deep-sea technology for many years, starting his career at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in the 1980s by working on Jason Jr., the small tethered vehicle that explored Titanic. He helped evolve that technology into…

Nereus Soars to the Ocean's Deepest Trench

Nereus Soars to the Ocean’s Deepest Trench

June 4, 2009

It took a village of engineers to build a completely new type of unmanned deep-sea robot that can reach the deepest part of the ocean. On May 31, 2009, a team of engineers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) celebrated…

Jason Meets the Carnivorous Sea Squirt

Jason Meets the Carnivorous Sea Squirt

April 3, 2009

Tito Collasius, an engineer at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, has witnessed some of oceanography’s more celebrated moments, including the discovery of the Titanic and the eruption of undersea volcanoes. But on expedition south of Tasmania that ended in January 2009,…

News Releases

Expedition captures first detailed imagery of Robert Falcon Scott’s last ship, Terra Nova, using cutting-edge Canadian Voyis 3D technology

July 14, 2026

The Heroic Age Expedition, led by the Royal Canadian Geographical Society in partnership with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, reveals the famed Antarctic explorer’s last ship, Terra Nova in stunning detail

Atlantis and Alvin

Heroic Age Expedition to survey two of the world’s most famous shipwrecks

July 1, 2026

The Royal Canadian Geographical Society, in partnership with WHOI, will undertake “once-in-a-generation” expedition to survey Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Quest and Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova

CUREE autonomous underwater vehicle

Autonomous underwater robot discovers hidden coral reef “hotspots”

May 13, 2026

New underwater robot opens new possibilities in coral reef conservation by autonomously identifying biodiversity “hotspots”

WHOI Scientist Catherine Walker Joins NASA-Selected EDGE Satellite Mission

February 12, 2026

Satellite measuring land, polar, and coastal regions could launch by 2030

Sargassum Patch

Study reveals dramatic decline in historic sargassum populations, with WHOI scientists helping unravel basin-scale changes

December 4, 2025

The findings point to warming ocean temperatures, shifting nutrient regimes, and changing circulation patterns as likely contributors to this emerging basin-scale redistribution of Sargassum.

News & Insights

WHOI builds bridges with Arctic Indigenous communities

February 10, 2021

NSF program fosters collaboration between indigenous communities and traditional scientists, allowing WHOI’s autonomous vehicles to shed light on a changing Arctic

WHOI-assisted study finds ocean dumping of DDT waste was “sloppy”

October 29, 2020

An investigative report this week in the LA Times features the work of WHOI’s marine geochemistry lab in identifying the discarded barrels and analyzing samples from the discovery.

Scroll To Top