Press Room
Great white sharks—top predators throughout the world’s ocean—grow much slower and live significantly longer than previously thought, according to a new study led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). In the first successful radiocarbon age validation study for adult white sharks, researchers analyzed vertebrae from four females and four males from the northwestern Atlantic Ocean. Age estimates were up to 73 years old for the largest male and 40 years old for the largest female.
Scientists and engineers using advanced technology and a unique robotic vehicle to study the deep sea will also be using their computers to interact with students, teachers, and the public about the research they are conducting.
Equipped with high-speed, high-resolution video, scientists have discovered important new information on how marine snail larvae swim, a key behavior that determines individual dispersal and ultimately, survival.
Researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Stony Brook University grew Atlantic […]
Marine geochemist Chris Reddy has been selected to receive the 2014 Clair C. Patterson Award from the Geochemical Society for his analytical and scientific contributions to organic geochemistry. The C.C. Patterson Award recognizes one scientist a year who has led […]
WHOI Senior Scientist Susan Humphris has been elected a 2013 Fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU). A committee of Fellows recognizes her “sustained and exemplary contributions to our understanding of volcanic and hydrothermal processes at mid-oceanic ridges.”
Humphris is among […]
Millions of people across the world live or depend on deltas for their livelihoods.
Formed at the lowest part of a river where its water flow slows and spreads into the sea, deltas are sediment-rich, biodiverse areas, a valuable source of […]
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) will host a talk by author Dallas Murphy and videographer Ben Harden on Friday, December 13, about the new book To The Denmark Strait, which features a firsthand account of a modern oceanographic adventure. The talk will begin at noon in Redfield Auditorium, located at 45 Water Street, Woods Hole, Ma.
Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI) has begun working with the Deep Submergence Laboratory at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to design and build the world’s most advanced robotic undersea research vehicle for use on SOI’s ship Falkor. The new vehicle will be capable of operating in the deepest known trenches on the planet, including the nearly 11,000-meter-deep Challenger Deep in the Mariana Trench. The design will capitalize on lessons learned from past WHOI vehicle designs, as well as advanced technologies developed for DEEPSEA CHALLENGER, the submersible and science platform that explorer and director James Cameron piloted to Challenger Deep in 2012 and donated to WHOI in 2013.
Dr. Susan Avery, president and director of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), has been appointed to a Scientific Advisory Board announced by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon.
For scientists studying marine mammals in the wild, data-logging tags are invaluable tools that allow them to observe animals’ movements and behaviors that are otherwise hidden beneath the waves much of the time. The tags, which temporarily attach to animals […]
The Yangtze finless porpoise, which inhabits the high-traffic waters near the Three Gorges Dam in China, is highly endangered, with only about 1,000 animals alive today. Scientists from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and their Chinese colleagues are using medical […]
Ocean currents, in concert with the atmosphere, play a critical role in regulating Earth’s climate. Yet the complexities of how water is moved around the globe and how the strength and pathways of ocean currents may change in a warming […]
WHOI Senior Scientist Scott Doney has been awarded the 2013 A.G. Huntsman Award for Excellence in Marine Science. He will receive the award later this year at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Since 1980, the Royal […]
Enduring two typhoons over a three-week period in August, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers, working in partnership with the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), have successfully deployed an OceanCube Observatory System in waters off […]
Just days before a team of researchers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and National Taiwan University set out to conduct fieldwork in the East China Sea, Typhoon Morakot—one of the most destructive storms ever to hit Taiwan—made landfall on […]
Scientists have discovered a vast plume of iron and other micronutrients more than 1,000 km long billowing from hydrothermal vents in the South Atlantic Ocean. The finding, published online Aug. 18 in the journal Nature Geoscience, calls past estimates of […]
White shark tagging expedition sets sail (July 31), Discovery Channel Shark Week segment “The Return of Jaws” features WHOI’s REMUS technology (Aug. 5), and WHOI scientists and engineers share latest research at Woods Hole public event (Aug. 7).
As mythic as […]
Under the microscope, they look like they could be from another planet, but these microscopic organisms inhabit the depths of our oceans in nearly infinite numbers.
To begin to identify where, when, and how much oceanic plankton can be found around […]
Ten science reporters, writers, and multimedia journalists from the U.S., Canada, and India have been selected to participate in the competitive Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Ocean Science Journalism Fellowship program. The program takes place September 8-13, 2013, in Woods […]
A chemical analysis of oil sheens found floating recently at the ocean’s surface near the site of the Deepwater Horizon disaster indicates that the source is pockets of oil trapped within the wreckage of the sunken rig. Both the Macondo […]