Research Highlights
Oceanus Magazine
In 2003, we traveled by ship to the New England Seamounts—a chain of extinct, undersea volcanoes about 500 miles off the East Coast of North America—to help collect dead corals that have been on the bottom of the ocean for…
Salty ocean water can be a nuisance. It’s undrinkable and it corrodes nearly everything it touches. But salt water’s inhospitality has always had one benefit: The salt kills microbes, making the ocean a fairly antiseptic environment. Or so we thought.…
Part of the fun of fishing is never knowing exactly what might be swimming around beneath you. But that mystery is a major annoyance when it comes to keeping track of fish populations. Now, a new undersea camera is bringing…
Like many babies, these tiny offspring arrived this spring amid much fanfare and a little trepidation. Never before had scientists witnessed the birth of deep-sea Antarctic corals, which unlike like their tropical, shallower-water cousins, normally live and breed in the…
Towing an underwater video microscope across the Atlantic Ocean, two scientists found unexpected abundances of colonial cyanobacteria that fertilize the oceans with nitrogen. The bacteria may turn out to be “a crucial component” that stimulates the growth of plants and…
News Releases
Differences in brain structure between echolocating and non-echolocating marine mammals offers insight into auditory processing
WHOI researchers part of collaborative, international effort to increase Marine Protected Areas and other strategies
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and partners take home prestigious award
Long-awaited event sets the stage for scientists to learn more about physical, chemical and biological processes in the deep ocean East Pacific Rise, Pacific Ocean (May 2, 2025) – Scientists diving in the human-occupied vehicle Alvin recently witnessed a rare…
Washington Sea Grant will work with Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to shed light on a highly invasive species
News & Insights
Are you an ocean lover? Go a little deeper with these courtship tips from beneath the waves!
April 24 marks the first-ever Right Whale Day in Massachusetts. WHOI biologist and veterinarian Michael Moore recently met with the resident who brought this special recognition about– and explains why it’s important to raise awareness about the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale.
A report out this week in Current Biology reveal that critically endangered North Atlantic right whales are up to three feet shorter than 40 years ago. This startling conclusion reinforces what scientists have suspected: even when entanglements do not lead directly to the death of North Atlantic right whales, they can have lasting effects on the imperiled population that may now number less than 400 animals. Further, females that are entangled while nursing produce smaller calves.
May 10, 2021 During a joint research trip on February 28 in Cape Cod Bay, Mass., WHOI whale trauma specialist Michael Moore, National Geographic photographer Brian Skerry, and scientists from New England Aquarium, witnessed a remarkable biological event: North…
Narwhals and other marine mammals could be vulnerable to a new threat we’ve become all too familiar with: COVID-19