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WHOI Scientist Takes Comprehensive Look at Human Impacts on Ocean Chemistry

Numerous studies are documenting the growing effects of climate change, carbon dioxide, pollution and other human-related phenomena on the world?s oceans. But most of those have studied single, isolated sources of pollution and other influences. Now, a marine geochemist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has published a report in the latest issue of the journal Science that evaluates the total impact of such factors on the ocean and considers what the future might hold.

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Rita Colwell to speak at MIT/WHOI Joint Program Commencement June 5 at WHOI

Rita R. Colwell, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland and the Johns Hopkins University and former Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF), will give the commencement address June 5 at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to the 2010 graduates of the MIT/WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography and Applied Ocean Sciences and Engineering.

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WHOI Study Calculates Volume and Depth of the World?s Oceans

How high is the sky? Scientists have a pretty good handle on that one, what with their knowledge of the troposphere, stratosphere an the other ?o-spheres.? Now, thanks to new work headed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), they are closing in on the other half of that age-old query: How deep is the ocean?

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WHOI’s Amy Bower Wins Unsung Heroine Award

Amy Bower

Inspiration can come from unexpected sources. For Amy Bower, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), it was triggered by a mundane-sounding requirement entitled ?Criterion 2,? part of a standard research grant proposal to the National Science Foundation in 2004.

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WHOI scientists find ancient asphalt domes off California coast

They paved paradise and, it turns out, actually did put up a parking lot. A big one. Some 700 feet deep in the waters off California?s jewel of a coastal resort, Santa Barbara, sits a group of football-field-sized asphalt domes unlike any other underwater features known to exist. About 35,000 years ago, a series of apparent undersea volcanoes deposited massive flows of petroleum 10 miles offshore. The deposits hardened into domes that were discovered recently by scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and UC Santa Barbara (UCSB).

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James E. Cloern Wins Ketchum Award

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has chosen James E. Cloern, a senior research scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey for the last 34 years, as the recipient of the 2010 Bostwick H. Ketchum Award.

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Long-Distance Larvae Speed to New Undersea Vent Homes

Working in a rare, ?natural seafloor laboratory? of hydrothermal vents that had just been rocked by a volcanic eruption, scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and other institutions have discovered what they believe is an undersea superhighway carrying tiny life forms unprecedented distances to inhabit the post-eruption site.

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Now in Broadband: Acoustic Imaging of the Ocean

Researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) have developed two advanced broadband acoustic systems that they believe could represent the acoustic equivalent of the leap from black-and-white television to high-definition…

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Pioneering Deep-Sea Robot Lost at Sea

A pioneering deep-sea exploration robot—one of the first successful submersible vehicles that was both unmanned and untethered to surface ships—was lost at sea Friday, March 5, on a research expedition…

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Chile Quake Occurred in Zone of “Increased Stress”

The massive, 8.8-magnitude earthquake that struck Chile Feb. 27 occurred in an offshore zone that was under increased stress caused by a 1960 quake of magnitude 9.5, according to geologist Jian Lin of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

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Optical system promises to revolutionize undersea communications

In a technological advance that its developers are likening to the cell phone and wireless Internet access, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) scientists and engineers have devised an undersea optical communications system that?complemented by acoustics?enables a virtual revolution in high-speed undersea data collection and transmission.

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WHOI contributes to special seamount issue of Oceanography magazine

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) biologist Timothy M. Shank is among five guest editors of a newly published special edition of the research journal Oceanography on the oceans? seamounts, submerged isolated mountains in the sea. Shank is also a contributor to the special Oceanography edition.

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WHOI Expert: Haiti quake occurred in complex, active seismic region

The magnitude 7.0 earthquake that triggered disastrous destruction and mounting death tolls in Haiti this week occurred in a highly complex tangle of tectonic faults near the intersection of the Caribbean and North American crustal plates, according to a quake expert at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) who has studied faults in the region and throughout the world.

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