Multimedia Items
Stressful Times
When water temperatures get too warm, corals expel their algal symbionts, a process known as coral bleaching. Without symbionts to provide food, corals can starve and die. This […]
Read MoreAnimals Behaving Like Plants
Meet a curious single-celled organism called Mesodinium rubrum. They are shaped like “8”s with hairlike cilia around them that they use to swim in the ocean. They usually graze on […]
Read MoreC-3PO, Meet RPV-340
When WHOI’s Deep Submergence Laboratory (DSL) was established in 1983, WHOI scientists Bob Ballard (right) and Dana Yoerger used a small vehicle called RPV-430, built by Benthos, Inc., as […]
Read MoreA Symbiotic Superorganism
WHOI microbiologist Amy Apprill says there’s more to coral reefs than just corals and fish. Reefs also teem with microscopic life—bacteria, archaea, viruses and algae. There are even […]
Read MoreA Million Microbes
A million microbes may live in a single drop of seawater—producing, consuming, and excreting various chemical compounds. Scientists are closely examining this stew of compounds dissolved in the ocean […]
Read MoreEyes on Both Coasts
OceanCube is an autonomous underwater coastal observatory that provides real-time data and images from a variety of biological, physical, and chemical sensors. A team from WHOI led by biologist Scott […]
Read MoreStunning Stinger
For such small, delicate creatures, they pack mighty painful stings. Known as a clinging jellyfish because they attach to seagrasses and seaweeds, Gonionemus are found along Pacific and Atlantic […]
Read MoreWoods Hole in Focus
WHOI engineer Amy Kukulya attaches a camera to a specially equipped REMUS 100 autonomous underwater vehicle while being filmed for the New England nightly newsmagazine, Chronicle, on Boston’s ABC […]
Read MoreComputing Power
This maze of electronics was part of WHOI’s first at-sea computer, an IBM machine installed on R/V Chain in 1962. A special air conditioning unit had to be installed to […]
Read MoreAlvin Takes Wing
On January 17, 1966, a U.S. Air Force B-52 bomber collided with a tanker during mid-air refueling off the coast of Spain, resulting in the loss of four hydrogen bombs. […]
Read MorePeach Pies
WHOI physical oceanographer Magdalena Andres conducts a final check of a Current and Pressure recording Inverted Echo Sounder (CPIES) before deploying the instrument from the research vessel Neil […]
Read MoreA Dunkable Laboratory
WHOI biologist Craig Taylor, left, and WHOI engineer Fred Thwaites work on the latest generation in a family of instruments called SIDs—Submersible Incubation Devices. Because it’s impossible to fully […]
Read MoreUnderwater at the Top of the World
WHOI geochemist Chris German (left) and Louis Whitcomb, chair of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, along with Antje Boetius, director of the Alfred Wegner Institute, display Explorer’s Club […]
Read MoreIlluminating the Ocean with Sound
WHOI’s new research vessel Neil Armstrong is equipped with an EK80 broadband acoustic echo sounder. It uses a wide range of sound frequencies to give scientists the ability to identify […]
Read MoreGetting Their Feet Wet
WHOI engineering assistant Chris Basque (foreground) pays out a tag line from the stern of the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer to a 62-inch flotation sphere he just helped deploy while other members […]
Read MoreLights, Ice, Action
Ice lights illuminate the sea surface ahead of the R/V Neil Armstrong last summer off the coast of Greenland. The cruise, led by WHOI physical oceanographer, Bob Pickart […]
Read MoreA Deep Look
Earth = Ocean Day
As the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke once pointed out, “How inappropriate to call this planet Earth, when clearly it is Ocean.” The ocean is the planet’s largest living […]
Read MoreSix if by Air
WHOI microbiologist Amy Apprill traveled to Chile with a multi-institutional team recently to study blue whales that gather off the coast of Patagonia each year. Among the equipment they […]
Read MoreOceanography in Action
Technicians on the Taiwanese research vessel Ocean Researcher III retrieve a turbulence profiler from the Pacific Ocean off the east coast of Taiwan. In a project sponsored by the […]
Read MoreCollecting Critical Data
MIT-WHOI Joint Program student Thomas DeCarlo recovers a data logger that recorded temperatures on Dongsha Atoll during a recent bleaching event. Water temperatures on Dongsha, a coral reef ecosystem […]
Read MoreA Star of the Food Web
A diatom chain of the genus Thalassionema is one of thousands of images captured each hour by the Imaging FlowCytobot, an automated, submersible microscope, operating continuously at the Read More
All Aflame
A sample is flame-sealed by Kathryn Elder for radiocarbon analysis at the National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (NOSAMS) facility at WHOI. The facility provides a range of radiocarbon […]
Read MoreDrama in the Deep
Red-hot magma and a plume of sulfurous fluid spew from the West Mata Volcano on the seafloor 110 miles southwest of Samoa in May 2009. At almost 4,000 feet below […]
Read More