WHOI in the News
Could Listening to the Deep Help Save it?
Some researchers are working to improve listening technology. At WHOI, Ying-Tsong Lin is building a starfish-shaped contraption of hydrophones that can tune into certain sounds hundreds of miles away, like a telescope for sound.
Mauritius oil spill: fears for island’s marine life after initial tests fail to resolve fuel mystery
Scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) said the first ultra-high-resolution analysis of an oil sample from the Mauritius spill revealed the substance to be “a complex and unusual mix of hydrocarbons.”
Scientists are tracking down deep sea creatures with free-floating DNA
Traditional methods, which include trawling and baited cameras, can only offer snapshots of the complex deep-ocean world, says Elizabeth Allan, a postdoctoral investigator at WHOI who works on the Institute’s ocean twilight zone project.
Pandemic Quiet Is Helping Humans Eavesdrop on Rare Dolphins
According to WHOI’s Laela Sayigh, who was not involved in the Burrunan research, identifying which dolphin in a pod is vocalizing at a particular time is key to deciphering their communication systems.
Why Science Labs Love Older Scientists
Sallie Chisholm, a 72-year-old biologist, has been enthralled by a tiny aquatic microbe that she and a team from WHOI discovered in the Atlantic Ocean in 1985.
As their population plummets, right whales verge on extinction
It’s unknown how many right whales are alive today, but Michael Moore, director of the Marine Mammal Center at WHOI, said there are likely to be fewer than 366.
United States Contributions to Global Ocean Plastic Waste
MPC Research Specialist, Hauke Kite-Powell, has recently been appointed to a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee to study U.S. contributions to global ocean plastic waste.
How the waters off Catalina became a DDT dumping ground …
A scientist involved in the discovery of the Titanic happened to be on board, so he helped them program the robots on where to go and how to search for the barrels. A marine geochemistry lab at WHOI ran the samples.
The Earth-Shaping Animal Migration No One Ever Sees
“All the vehicles on the road in the United States produce around 1.5 PgC per year,” says Kevin Archibald, a biological oceanographer at WHOI and lead author of that study. DVM could be understood as offsetting about two-thirds of all U.S. automobile emissions.
Should Japan dump radioactive water from Fukushima into the ocean?
Around 1.2 million tonnes of water contaminated by radioactive substances from the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster will be dumped in the Pacific Ocean, as part of a plan expected to be approved by the Japanese government within weeks.
Ropeless Fishing Systems Hold Promise for Fishermen—and Whales
To help advance the effort to find a feasible and cost-effective gear-marking solution, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, The Pew Charitable Trusts and others are engaged in conversations with industry, enforcement, and regulators in the U.S. and Canada—which will culminate in a virtual workshop on gear marking in the coming months.
Move Over, Mars: The Search for Life on Saturn’s Largest Moon
“The great thing about hydrothermal vents is that they provide a lot of energy sources for microbial life that doesn’t include sunlight,” says Julie Huber, a marine chemist at WHOI. Organisms living at hydrothermal vents on Earth’s seafloors, she explains, “can use chemical energy, so that means things like sulphur, iron, hydrogen and methane and they create a base of the food chain.”
Looks Like Japan Is Going Ahead With Plan to Dump Radioactive Fukushima Water Into the Ocean
A study from WHOI published in August, warned of the possibility that other potentially hazardous contaminants in the wastewater, namely carbon-14, cobalt-60, and strontium-90, could still be released into the Pacific Ocean.
Heat waves on Cape Cod may be tied to slowing ocean current
WHOI researchers studied 25 years of data in search of cause behind rising ocean temperatures.
Looks Like Japan Is Going Ahead With Plan to Dump Radioactive Fukushima Water Into the Ocean
A WHOI study published in August, warned of the possibility that other potentially hazardous contaminants in the wastewater, namely carbon-14, cobalt-60, and strontium-90, could still be released into the Pacific Ocean.
Woods Hole scientist part of MOSAiC expedition that spent year researching Arctic ecosystem
The research vessel Polarstern returned to its home port in Germany Monday after spending a year locked in thick sea ice, floating in the Arctic Ocean and gathering data. Among those onboard was Carin Ashjian, a senior scientist and biology department chairwoman at WHOI.
Is seaweed the future of fuel?
“Macroalgae needs to scale up to the point where it’s economically feasible for biofuel, and to do this we are going to have thousands of hectares of farms,” says Erin Fischell, an assistant scientist at WHOI.
Is seaweed the future of fuel?
Erin Fischell, an assistant scientist at WHOI, points out: “Macroalgae needs to scale up to the point where it’s economically feasible for biofuel, and to do this we are going to have thousands of hectares of farms.”
The Lungs of the Earth: Shifting a Metaphor from Superstition to Science
Decoding The Black Box: The 2015 US Disaster That Revolutionized Ship Crash Investigations
The first challenge for the El Faro was to locate and extract the VDR. It took three expeditions over 11 months and the use of novel video telepresence, to be able to go down, retrieve it. The NTSB and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution also highlight the lengths they went to here.
Pandemic Quiet Means We Can Eavesdrop on Rare Australian Dolphins
According to Laela Sayigh, from WHOI, who is not involved in the Burrunan research, identifying which dolphin in a pod is vocalizing at a particular time is key to deciphering their communication systems.
Arctic Science Mission Wraps Up as Research Ship Docks in Germany
After a year spent drifting across the top of the world, frozen in sea ice, a German research ship returned home on Monday, ending the largest Arctic science expedition in history, one aimed at better understanding a region that is rapidly changing as the world warms.
WHOI-NOAA Partnership Tackles Critical Gap In Climate Knowledge
Researchers at WHOI were awarded a $500,000 grant from the NOAA Climate Observations and Monitoring program to develop machine learning tools to improve estimates of air-sea heat exchange in the Arctic Ocean and adjacent seas.
WHOI receives NOAA awards to study, predict harmful algal blooms
Researchers at WHOI were recently named in a list of 17 new research projects funded by the NOAA to improve the nation’s collective response to the growing problem of harmful algal blooms.