Research Highlights
Oceanus Magazine
“Today only a remnant of the population survives, no more than 350 whales clustered in calving and feeding grounds along the eastern seaboard of North America. Only occasional right whale sightings in the Gulf of St. Lawrence or in the waters between Iceland, Greenland, and Norway give echoes of their once substantially greater range.
Finding minuscule life forms in a seemingly infinite ocean isn’t trivial. But in recent years, oceanographers have been developing new techniques and instruments to identify and count marine microorganisms. Year by year, we are learning more and more about them and discovering that they are even more numerous, varied, and important than we previously thought.
Light in the ocean is like light in no other place on Earth. It is a world that is visibly different from our familiar terrestrial world, and one that marine animals, plants, and microbes are adapted to in extraordinary ways. Light behaves very differently when it moves from air into water. It moves through the expansive depths of an ocean that is devoid of solid surfaces. These and other factors combine to create an environment that has no equivalent on land.
Capped with a formidable ice and snow cover, plunged into total darkness during the winter, buffeted by blizzard winds,and bitterly cold, the Arctic Ocean is one of the most inaccessible and yet beautiful environments on Earth. Life here endures some of the greatest extremes in light and temperature known to our planet. Yet despite these inhospitable conditions, the Arctic Ocean is teeming with life.
“We have found that otoliths of fish born in each of the five natal estuaries had different, unique isotope and element compositions, or “signatures.” All their lives, these fish had carried a natural tag, encoding the location where they were hatched.
News Releases
Newly developed bioadhesive sensors (BIMS) are effective and less invasive than traditional tagging. Scientists can attach them with a thin layer of dried-hydrogel in less than 20 seconds.
Researchers from WHOI studied the microbes in coral reef water by examining eight reefs in the U.S. Virgin Islands over a period of seven years, which included periods of hurricane and coral disease disturbance.
Researchers at WHOI demonstrated that replaying healthy reef sounds could potentially be used to encourage coral larvae to recolonize damaged or degraded reefs.
High resolution satellite imagery and field-based validation surveys have provided the first multi-year time series documenting emperor penguin populations.
Researchers aim to use their science to help inform best practices and strategies to better protect fin whales in waters off NY and NJ
Woods Hole, Mass. – The New York Bight is an important year-round habitat for endangered fin whales, […]
News & Insights
MIT-WHOI Joint Program student Jaida Elcock celebrates Shark Week and shark awareness in this Q&A
At the northernmost year-round research station in the world, scientists brave frigid temperatures and perpetual night to solve an ocean mystery. The team is trying to figure out how some of the tiniest animals survive at a time of year when their main food source is not available.
WHOI’s Jaida Elcock and Lauren Dykman explain why parasites may be a sign of ocean health
