Multimedia Items
Taller than mom
McKean Island, a low, treeless outcrop of coral sand in the equatorial Pacific Ocean, is home to many thousands of seabirds. Though once mined for bird guano, the island was…
Read MoreInteractive Nereus
Oceanographic workhorse
The submersible Alvin prepares for a dive in September 2009. Built in 1964, the hardworking sub helped turn a sunless, freezing marine world into a new frontier. More than 4,000…
Read MoreTurning Carbon Dioxide Gas into Rock
By Ari Daniel :: Originally published online October 22, 2009
Read MoreExpanding exploration
Summer Student Fellow Stephanie Chin, of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, works with WHOI senior machinist Jim Brown to fabricate components for her summer project —a biologic pump sampler prototype for…
Read MoreDrilling for clues
In 2007, WHOI geologist Liviu Giosan and his colleagues drilled a 42-meter-deep core through sediments that have piled up since the early Danube delta began forming. The team used cores…
Read MoreJust passin’ through?
Larry Madin, director of research at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and also a marine biologist and diver, snapped this image while surveying undersea life on a September 2009…
Read MoreNight fishing
Under the cover of darkness, the deck crew aboard the R/V Cape Hatteras work to secure the robotic vehicle Nereus and crane it back aboard the ship. A team of…
Read MoreLonging to go, again
Senior research specialist Jim Broda stands under the long core deployment mechanism on R/V Knorr as the ship sits at the WHOI dock in September 2009. The long corer, which…
Read MorePress box
Ocean Science Journalism Fellow Jane Qiu helps oceanographer emeritus and biologist George Hampson deploy a Van Veen Grab Sampler off the fantail of R/V Tioga during a day cruise in…
Read MoreVoyage to the Remote Phoenix Islands
Microbe mystery solved
Trichodesmium, shown in this micrograph, is a photosynthetic bacteria, common in warm, tropical and subtropical surface waters. Trichodesmium cells form filaments called trichomes that associate into the roughly 2mm colonies…
Read MoreListening to bacteria
Summer Student Fellow Rose Kantor spent her summer working with marine chemist Tracy Mincer studying quorum sensing in microbes associated with sinking particles in the ocean water column. Quorum sensing…
Read MoreChanging chemistry
Ocean acidification—a consequence of increased carbon dioxide emissions from human industrial activity—could harm a wide range of marine organisms and the food webs that depend on them. Mollusks, including oysters,…
Read MoreUnder threatening skies
Oceanographer Emeritus George Hampson (center) shows a group of Ocean Science Journalism Fellows how to take water samples during a cruise on the R/V Tioga in September 2009. Though officially…
Read MoreFishing for research
Summer Student Fellow William Goldsmith fishes for research off the Iselin dock this past summer. Goldsmith, of Harvard University, worked in WHOI’s Fish Ecology Lab alongside biologist Simon Thorrold. The…
Read MoreA rare sight
It doesn’t happen often, but on this sunny September day, two of the Institution’s research vessels — Knorr and Oceanus — were in port at the Iselin Marine Facility. Where…
Read MoreCurrent news
WHOI scientist emeritus Sandy Williams describes the Modular Acoustic Velocity Sensor (MAVS) to the 2009 class of WHOI Ocean Science Journalism Fellows. Williams and physical oceanographer Jim Churchill led the…
Read MoreHunt for Microbial ‘Trojan Horses’
Matt First, a postdoctoral scholar in the WHOI Geology and Geophysics Department, studies “Trojan horses” in the sea — single-celled animals that harbor disease-causing bacteria inside them. “These protists don’t…
Read MoreAnatomy of a Tsunami
While tsunamis can neither be prevented nor precisely predicted, people educated about particular warning signs can save their own lives and the lives of others. Learn more about tsunamis and…
Read MoreNot so friendly skies
2009 Ocean Science Journalism fellows Elise Hugus and Jeff Rubin gaze out at threatening skies as the research vessel Tioga heads into the Quick’s Hole passage on its way back…
Read MoreBeware the box-jelly
This jellyfish is called a box-jelly, or a cubomedusa. This type of jellyfish can deliver toxic stings, so it was collected very carefully by a researchers working in the Phoenix…
Read MoreWhat makes a tidal flat tick?
That’s exactly what WHOI researchers are working to find out with the Skagit Tidal Flats Experiment. Instrument tripods deployed in Skagit Bay are being used to determine the importance of…
Read MoreGliding surgeon
A surgeon fish glides by a coral reef in the Phoenix Islands Protected Area. A period of very warm water in the equatorial Pacific in 2002, brought about by an…
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