Student Research
Oceanus Magazine
The night approaches quickly. A harbor seal plunges into the water, diving deep as the sunlight recedes. Through the dark, turbid waters, she searches for fish. Suddenly, the whiskers on her right cheek begin vibrating. And she’s off. Heather Beem is closely examining seal whiskers for insights to design new undersea technology. (New England Aquarium;…
There’s a great need to collect ocean temperature data. And there are millions of scuba divers out there.
Rip currents claim more than 100 lives in the United States each year and are the leading cause of lifeguard rescues. Scientists created a large gash in the seafloor to…
Scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution share their field-tested experience, training graduate students on methods and instruments to collect data in the coastal ocean.
Back in my high school, and maybe yours too, kids naturally separated into cliques—jocks, punks, preppies, hippies, and at the extremes of the mythical left- and right-hemisphere brain spectrum, nerds and the artsy types. The latter two never spoke to each other. The rest of us rarely talked to either of them. Too bad. We…
Back in my high school, and maybe yours too, kids naturally separated into cliques—jocks, punks, preppies, hippies, and at the extremes of the mythical left- and right-hemisphere brain spectrum, nerds and the artsy types. The latter two never spoke to each other. The rest of us rarely talked to either of them. Too bad. We…
On the Serengeti Plains of Africa, lions stalk their prey mainly by sight. Scientists studying them also use their eyes to observe the hunt and indeed the entire ecosystem. They can take in the whole panorama, easily distinguishing lions from hyenas, zebras from gazelles, acacia trees from termite hills and savannah grass. Pity the marine…
Stephen Licht built an unusual underwater robot with a curious name. With a wink toward James Joyce, he named it Finnegan, because he was particularly interested in studying the wake made by the robot as it moved through water. Instead of the usual screw propellers you find on boats or underwater vehicles, Finnegan has four…
In 2003, Stacy DeRuiter arrived as a graduate student at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), where a new device developed at WHOI was sparking a revolution in marine mammal research: the D-tag. The cell phone-size digital recording device—affixed temporarily (and non-invasively) to large whales—has given scientists the ability for the first time to track whale…
