Press Room
An international team of scientists, led by researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of Oregon and University of Sydney, has discovered an active underwater volcano near the Samoan Island chain about 2,400 miles southwest…
Cadmium, commonly considered a toxic metal and often used in combination with nickel in batteries, has been found to have a biological use as a nutrient in the ocean, the first known biological use of cadmium in any life form.…
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Senior Scientist Stanley Hart of the Geology and Geophysics Department was recently elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the oldest learned societies in the nation. Dr. Hart is…
In 2002, researchers diving in the submersible Alvin returned to the Galápagos Rift, a mid-ocean ridge about 250 miles from the Galápagos Islands in the eastern Pacific Ocean where hydrothermal vents and exotic organisms were first found in 1977. They…
A miniature computer weighing less than 5 ounces attached to the backs of beaked whales with suction cups is providing new clues to the behavior and sounds made by the deep-diving reclusive species. Little is known about these mid-sized toothed…
WHOI research vessels are exploring the oceans this spring from Bermuda to the Bay of Fundy in the North Atlantic and from Mexico to the Galápagos Islands in the eastern Pacific, conducting studies related to climate change, harmful algal blooms,…
Layers of salty ocean water mix with layers of fresher water, creating a salty staircase or layering driven by small-scale convection known as salt fingers. Although scientists have known about salt fingers since 1960, when they were discovered at the…
Scientists, natural resource managers and students from four continents will gather at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) April 21 and 22 to discuss a growing global problem: the sea squirt. The mysterious filter feeding organism, a didemnid also known…
Corals from Papua New Guinea and Barbados indicate that changes in sea level, one of the key indexes for global climate change, may have been more frequent in the past than previously thought, according to a report in today’s issue…
A former Oceanographer of the Navy and Rear Admiral who headed Marine Operations at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) for 14 years has been honored by the Institution with the establishment of the Rear Admiral Richard F. Pittenger, USN…
Scientists have long debated what causes glacial/interglacial cycles, which have occurred most recently at intervals of about 100,000 years. A new study reported in the March 24 issue of Nature finds that these glacial cycles are paced by variations in…
Elephants learn to imitate sounds that are not typical of their species, the first known example after humans of vocal learning in a non-primate terrestrial mammal.
A small autonomous underwater vehicle, or AUV, named Spray was launched yesterday about 12 miles southeast of Bermuda. The two-meter-(6-foot)-long orange glider with a four-foot wingspan will slowly make its way northwest, crossing the Gulf Stream and reaching the continental…
Predicting when large earthquakes might occur may be a step closer to reality, thanks to a new study of undersea earthquakes in the eastern Pacific Ocean. The study, reported in today??A’s Nature, is the first to suggest that small seismic shocks or foreshocks preceding a major earthquake can be used in some cases to predict the main tremors.
Scientists from WHOI and USGS Menlo Park will be assessing future earthquake risk in Algeria and training Algerian researchers under a new two-year project funded by the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) of the United States Agency for International…
WHOI researchers and colleagues from other laboratories will be able to look at mud from the seafloor in a new way, thanks to a high-tech scanner capable of making rapid, non-destructive, ultra-high-resolution analyses of sediment cores from the seafloor around…
In a lush stand of mangroves on the Pacific coast of Panama, a Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) biologist is looking for encrusting barnacles and oysters, common on the roots of mangroves in one stand but nearly absent in a…
CONTACTS Monte Basgall (919) 681-8057 monte.basgall@duke.edu Shelley Dawicki (508) 289-2270 sdawicki@whoi.edu DURHAM, N.C. — A team of geologists from Duke University and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has discovered a grinding, coordinated ballet of crustal “microplates” unfolding below the equatorial east…
Chemicals found in whale blubber, and initially suspected of being from industrial sources, have turned out to be naturally occurring, raising questions about the accumulation of both natural and industrial compounds in marine life.
A dozen major earthquakes of magnitude 7.0 or greater have occurred in the Caribbean near Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands and the island of Hispaniola, shared by Haiti and the Dominican Republic, in the past 500 years, and several…