Research Highlights
News & Insights
After over 80 research trips and 380 deep-sea dives in submersible HOV Alvin, pilot Bruce Strickrott has learned a thing or two about living in confined spaces. Here are his tips on living a healthy life for all of us...
By Elise Hugus | April 22, 2020 Critically endangered North Atlantic right whales swim in the waters off Massachusetts in February 2019. WHOI biologist Michael Moore uses drone technology to identify, track, and even take samples from the whales’ exhaled...
WHOI mechanical engineer discusses the great challenges—and rewards—of designing vehicles for deep-sea exploration By Toni Parras | March 12, 2020 WHOI engineer Molly Curran peers out from Neried Under Ice (NUI), a hybrid remotely operated vehicle, which she helped design...
RBR, a Canadian-based manufacturer of oceanographic instruments, announced the 16 members of the RBR2020 Cohort, a two-year accelerator program for innovative early-career ocean scientists. WHOI associate scientist Anna Michel is pictured in the second row from the top, second from...
Spock versus the volcanoA decision-making robot searches for life and danger in an ancient submarine volcano By Evan Lubofsky | January 15, 2019 Ocean robots are becoming so intelligent, they’re starting to make decisions on where to explore and what...
This WHOI engineer discusses his passion for robots, the ocean, and adventure By Evan Lubofsky | November 12, 2019 For Robin Littlefield (pictured here) science needs a helping hand to get to the ocean floor – and that hand is...
Rick Chandler has made a career out of managing submersible operations at WHOI By Daniel Hentz | October 29, 2019 Rick Chandler, one of WHOI’s longest-serving employees, oversees support for the Alvin Group. (Photo by Daniel Hentz, Woods Hole Oceanographic...
How a remotely operated vehicle made by Saab is lending a watchful eye to scientific mooring operations By Daniel Hentz | October 23, 2019 WHOI Engineer Jared Schwartz pilots the remotely operated vehicle, Seaeye Falcon to investigate an unrecovered mooring...
Erin Fischell explains her new vision for underwater science October 16, 2019 Erin Fischell readies an AUV a test mission at Ashumet Pond. Photo by Thomas N. Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution The vastness of our oceans demands extensive study...
WHOI’s new hadal robot moves one step closer to exploring the limits of life on Earth and beyond By Evan Lubofsky | October 15, 2019 Orpheus, an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV), is recovered off the New England continental shelf during...
Oceanus Magazine
On Oct. 1, 2015, the 790-foot cargo ship El Faro sank near the Bahamas during Hurricane Joaquin. All 33 crew members died in the tragedy. The ship was equipped with a voyage data recorder, or VDR, that could reveal clues...
After successfully testing a long-range underwater communications system that worked under Arctic Ocean ice, an engineering team at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) adapted it for a very different environment—the tropics—and for a different purpose—to provide warnings of impending tsunamis....
Banks Island is one of 36,563 ice-covered islands sprinkled in the Arctic Ocean north of Canada. It is home to the world’s largest population of muskoxen—about 68,000—one tiny village with a population of slightly more than 100 people, and an...
“All right, Mr. Brickley, the show begins at two o’clock,” John Kemp announced as he entered the ship’s main lab on Saturday afternoon. Kemp is the deck operations leader for our expedition aboard Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s research vessel Neil...
Kara Dwyer Dodge grew up hearing stories of the sea monster her father pulled from the ocean. In 1966, Richard Dwyer, a third-generation fisherman in Scituate, Mass., found a sea turtle entangled in the lines of one of his lobster...
WHOI engineers are developing a new kind of lobster trap buoy that could help keep whales from getting tangled in fishing gear. Click on the numbers above to learn more. On a mobile device? Click here for mobile version. Go back to...
More and more whales are becoming snarled in fishing gear, often dying slow, painful deaths. Two Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) engineers have invented a lobster trap device that they say could help whales avert entanglements and, at the same...
Earth’s warming climate is poised to cause changes on our planet. In the Arctic, permafrost has begun to thaw, releasing methane, a heat-trapping greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. On the seafloor, warmer ocean temperatures threaten to release methane gas by...
The nation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) has reached a major milestone: Its network of ocean sensor systems is now fully operational and sending a broad, continuous stream of data back to shore. Funded by the National Science Foundation with a...
Scientists returned in 2015 and 2016 to the wreck of a 180-foot ship that sank off the Greek island of Antikythera around 65 B.C., and recovered luxury items that included a bronze leg of a couch, remains of a bone...
News Releases
Discussion with experts on ocean technology, exploration, and storytelling On May 20, ocean explorer and world-renowned filmmaker James Cameron will host a special edition of Ocean Encounters, a popular virtual event series from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Viewers of this special event,...
Paper reviews major findings, technological advances that could help in next deep-sea spill. Ten years ago, a powerful explosion destroyed an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, killing 11 workers and injuring 17 others. Over a span of 87...
The SeaWorld & Busch Gardens Conservation Fund announced that it has committed $900,000 over the next three years in the fight to save the critically endangered North Atlantic Right Whale. The announcement was made by Dr. Michael Moore of the Woods...
Underwater footage captured by the REMUS SharkCam observing the behavior of basking sharks off the west coast of Scotland. (Credit: Amy Kukulya, @oceanrobotcam, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution) An autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) known as the REMUS SharkCam has been used...
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) research engineer Loral O’Hara was introduced today at Johnson Space Flight Center as a member of NASA’s most recent class of astronauts. O’Hara was one of just 12 to be selected from an applicant pool...
An international research team discovered a human skeleton during its ongoing excavation of the famous Antikythera Shipwreck (circa 65 B.C.). The shipwreck, which holds the remains of a Greek trading or cargo ship, is located off the Greek island of...
On the first trip to study great white sharks in the wild off Guadalupe Island in 2013, the REMUS SharkCam team returned with an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) tattooed with bite marks and some of the most dramatic footage ever...
An international research team has discovered spectacular artifacts during its ongoing excavation of the famous Antikythera Shipwreck (circa 65 B.C.) this month. The shipwreck is located off the Greek island of Antikythera in the Aegean Sea. Led by archaeologists and...
Technology and vehicles developed and operated by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists and engineers were instrumental in assisting the NTSB in locating the voyage data recorder (VDR) of El Faro. The cargo ship El Faro’s voyage data recorder was...
Steve Elgar, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), has been selected as a 2016 National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellow (NSSEFF) by the Department of Defense. Elgar, a physical oceanographer in the Applied Ocean Physics and...
