Research Highlights
Oceanus Magazine
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…
Scientists collected more than 1,000 shrimplike creatures, swimming snails and worms, and gelatinous animals, including many species never seen before, on a landmark cruise to take inventory of the ocean’s zooplankton. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution biologist Peter Wiebe led a…
News Releases
WHOI scientists delve into the elusive fish’s role in the food web
While the impacts of plastic pollution on human health and the environment are growing, the report finds, increasing harm due to plastics is not inevitable.
Filter-feeding whales sample the Arctic food web, tracking decades of change
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
News & Insights
WHOI’s Dennis McGillicuddy on why ocean life matters deeply to the Sunshine State
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…