• share
• favorite_border

WHOI scientists studied microbial communities surrounding coral reefs by examining eight in the U.S. Virgin Islands over a period of seven years.

• share
• favorite_border

Ocean scientists discovered the new deep-sea hydrothermal vent sites on the seafloor at 2,550 meters (8366 feet, or 1.6 miles) depth.

• share
• favorite_border

New oceanic research provides clear evidence of a human “fingerprint” on climate change and shows that specific signals from human activities have altered the seasonal cycle amplitude of sea surface temperatures (SST).

• share
• favorite_border

High resolution satellite imagery and field-based validation surveys have provided the first multi-year time series documenting emperor penguin populations.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers at WHOI demonstrated that replaying healthy reef sounds could potentially be used to encourage coral larvae to recolonize damaged or degraded reefs.

• share
• favorite_border

Each year, the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO) honors scientists for their outstanding achievements in aquatic science research, service, and education.

• share
• favorite_border

This study reports widespread mineral carbonation of mantle rocks in an oceanic transform fueled by magmatic degassing of CO2.

• share
• favorite_border

Vitamin B12 deficiency in people can cause a slew of health problems and even become fatal. Until now, the same deficiencies were thought to impact certain types of algae, as well.

• share
• favorite_border

In a new paper published in ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, WHOI scientists Collin Ward, Bryan James, Chris Reddy, and Yanchen Sun put different types of plastics and paper drinking straws head-to-head to see which degrade the fastest in the coastal ocean.

• share
• favorite_border

Researchers have developed a sustainability metric for the ecological design of plastic products that have low persistence in the environment. Adhering to this metric could provide substantial environmental and societal benefits

• share
• favorite_border

A new study reveals deep-sea corals and sponges produce the ROS superoxide, meaning these chemicals have a string of previously unknown effects on ocean life.

• share
• favorite_border

Partners of the Ocean Pavilion at COP28 and associated stakeholders are calling on world leaders to recognize the importance of the ocean in climate and support efforts to expand and improve ocean observations worldwide, including expanding coverage in under-observed regions via the just announced COP28 Dubai Ocean Declaration.

• share
• favorite_border

Evidence of climate change in the North Atlantic during the last 1,000 years can be seen in the deep ocean, according to a newly published paper led by researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and University College London.

• share
• favorite_border

If you’ve ever witnessed a shark breach the water—whether in person or somewhere on the Internet—that fleeting but awe-inspiring moment is just a small fraction of the time it spends at the surface of the ocean. Most of the time sharks and other large marine predators are out of sight, begging the question—where do they go?

• share
• favorite_border

A group of the world’s leading ocean scientific, philanthropic, and other stakeholder organizations, led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, have come together to highlight the global ocean at the upcoming 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, Nov. 30 – Dec. 12, 2023. The conference is expected to host over 70,000 delegates, including heads of state and world leaders, to build consensus and facilitate progress on climate action among 197 countries, the EU and thousands of non-government organizations, companies, youth groups, and other stakeholders focused on efforts to achieve the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement.

• share
• favorite_border

Under normal conditions, the floating macroalgae Sargassum spp. provide habitat for hundreds of types of organisms. However, the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt (GASB) that emerged in 2011 has since then caused unprecedented inundations of this brown seaweed on Caribbean coastlines, with harmful effects on ecosystems while posing challenges to regional economies and tourism, and concerns for respiratory and other human health issues.

• share
• favorite_border

The Gulf Stream is intrinsic to the global climate system, bringing warm waters from the Caribbean up the East Coast of the United States. As it flows along the coast and then across the Atlantic Ocean, this powerful ocean current influences weather patterns and storms, and it carries heat from the tropics to higher latitudes as part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. A new study published today in Nature Climate Change now documents that over the past 20 years, the Gulf Stream has warmed faster than the global ocean as a whole and has shifted towards the coast. The study, led by Robert Todd, a physical oceanographer at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), relies on over 25,000 temperature and salinity profiles collected between 2001 and 2023.

• share
• favorite_border

The Gulf Stream transport of water through the Florida Strait has slowed by 4% over the past four decades, with a 99% certainty that this weakening is more than expected from random chance, according to a new study.

• share
• favorite_border

With coral reefs worldwide undergoing unprecedented stressors due to climate change and other human pressures, a large-scale application of innovative techniques shows promise for detecting the health condition of reefs.

• share
• favorite_border

The National Science Foundation (NSF) announced that it has awarded a coalition of academic and oceanographic research organizations a second, five-year contract to operate and maintain the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI).

• share
• favorite_border

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers are among the 17 projects that have been awarded funding by NOAA’s Ocean Acidification Program on behalf of the National Oceanographic Partnership Program (NOPP).

• share
• favorite_border

Scientific exploration of the deep ocean has largely remained inaccessible to most people because of barriers to access due to infrastructure, training, and physical ability requirements for at-sea oceanographic research.

• share
• favorite_border

A study of 12 species of highly migratory fish predators—including sharks, tuna, and billfish such as marlin and swordfish—finds that most of them will encounter widespread losses of suitable habitat and redistribution from current habitats in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean (NWA) and the Gulf of Mexico (GOM) by 2100. These areas are among the fastest warming ocean regions and are projected to increase between 1-6°C (+1-10°F) by the end of the century, a sign of climate-driven changes in marine ecosystems.

• share
• favorite_border

Cape Cod Children’s Museum (CCCM), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and the WHOI Sea Grant program are combining forces to bring an ocean-themed educational exhibit to the CCCM, just in time for summer.

• share
• favorite_border

With human-induced greenhouse gases fueling global climate change, there is an urgent need to bolster emissions reductions with large-scale carbon dioxide removal.

• share
• favorite_border

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Sea Grant has been recommended for rapid response funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Sea Grant Program to study the pathways of circulation in Cape Cod Bay. This study is designed to shed light on the possible fate of 1.1 million gallons of radioactive wastewater from the Pilgrim Nuclear Power Station, which the plant’s owner, Holtec, has proposed to release into Cape Cod Bay.

• share
• favorite_border

The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is assuming management of the Oleander Project, a 30-year effort to monitor circulation in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean using data gathered from sensors mounted on or launched from a cargo ship that makes regular crossings of the Gulf Stream. Magdalena Andres, an associate scientist in WHOI’s Department of Physical Oceanography will head the effort, which began in 1992 under the leadership of H. Thomas Rossby at the University of Rhode Island Graduate School of Oceanography (URI GSO) and Charles Flagg at Stony Brook University, New York.

• share
• favorite_border

A new book by Christopher Reddy, marine chemist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), identifies the principal challenges that scientists face during an environmental disaster when communicating with different stakeholder groups, and offers advice on how to navigate the maze of competing interests and deliver actionable science when the clock is ticking. Science Communications in a Crisis: An Insider's Guide (Routledge; May 10, 2023), draws on Reddy’s decades of experience and offers his hard-won advice from the front lines of environmental disasters.

• share
• favorite_border

New research provides clear evidence of a human “fingerprint” on climate change and shows that specific signals from human activities have altered the temperature structure of Earth’s atmosphere.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study provides the first observational evidence of the stabilization of the anti-cyclonic Beaufort Gyre, which is the dominant circulation of the Canada Basin and the largest freshwater reservoir in the Arctic Ocean.

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists have discovered extensive, ancient deep-sea coral reefs within the Galápagos Marine Reserve (GMR) – the first of their kind ever to be documented inside the marine protected area (MPA) since it was established in 1998.

• share
• favorite_border

How and where life began 3.5 billion years ago is still a mystery, but there are two things of which scientists are almost certain. First, for much of that time, life on Earth was almost exclusively microbial. Second, there must have been prebiotic precursor compounds such as amino acids, organic acids, and lipids available to jumpstart the formation of DNA, enzymes, and cell walls, and to set life on a path leading to the complex forms we see today.

• share
• favorite_border

A wax that is derived from a commonly grown marine microalga could be the next big thing in cosmetics and personal care products, thanks to a recent license agreement between the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Western Washington University (WWU)—which jointly own the patents—and Upwell Cosmetics, a start-up materials company founded in Woods Hole, Mass.

• share
• favorite_border

The Cooperative Institute for the North Atlantic Region (CINAR), led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), is pleased to announce the appointment of four CINAR Fellows in Quantitative Fisheries and Ecosystems Science, which is supported in part by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. The fellows are Robert Griffin, School for Marine Science and Technology at UMass Dartmouth; Lisa Kerr, University of Maine; Kathy Mills, Gulf of Maine Research Institute; and Mei Sato, WHOI.

• share
• favorite_border

The scope and scale of threats facing coral reefs demand new ways of approaching the questions that need to be answered in order to ensure the future of reefs worldwide. That’s the conclusion of a paper released in print today by a multi-disciplinary scientists and engineers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

• share
• favorite_border

Scientists aboard a U.S. research vessel in the tropical Atlantic are taking advantage of the ship’s long-planned path through the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt to take some of the first samples from a massive, ongoing bloom. Photos and video from the ship show the algae mats on the surface of the eastern Atlantic in the belt that extends from west Africa to the Gulf of Mexico.

• share
• favorite_border

Diagnostic imaging such as X-rays, MRIs, and CT scans are important tools in monitoring the health of humans and animals. But for researchers in the field, it is difficult to administer these common tests on wild populations.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study provides novel documentation of kelp forest decline along the west coast of the U.S. and Mexico in response to the 2014–2016 record-breaking marine heatwave, along with evidence of regional recovery.

• share
• favorite_border

For the first time, leading researchers from the fields of healthcare, ocean science, and social science have collaborated to quantify plastic's considerable risks to all life on Earth.

• share
• favorite_border

A new study published today in the journal Nature brings scientists one step closer to knowing how or when massive quantities of water arrived on earth.

• share
• favorite_border

The injection of bubbles from waves breaking in turbulent and cold high-latitude regions of the high seas is an underappreciated way in which atmospheric gases are transported into the interior ocean. An improved mechanistic understanding of gas exchange in high latitudes is important for several reasons, including to better constrain climate models that are used to predict changes in the ocean inventory of key gases like oxygen and carbon dioxide.

• share
• favorite_border

Today, a team of scientists and engineers from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) left Charleston, SC aboard the R/V Neil Armstrong to begin test deployments in preparation for the installation of an Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) ocean observing system in its new location in the southern Mid-Atlantic Bight (MAB).

• share
• favorite_border

When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020 with associated travel restrictions, Matthew Long thought his students could shift their overseas research projects to instead study the seagrass meadow ecosystem in Waquoit Bay. It’s a shallow, micro-tidal estuary on the south side of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, near the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) where Long is an associate scientist in the Marine Chemistry and Geochemistry Department.

• share
• favorite_border

Ongoing climate change driven by greenhouse gas emissions is often discussed in terms of global average warming. For example, the landmark Paris Agreement seeks to limit global warming to 1.5 ⁰C, relative to pre-industrial levels. However, the extent of future warming will not be the same throughout the planet. One of the clearest regional differences in climate change is the faster warming over land than sea. This “terrestrial amplification” of future warming has real-world implications for understanding and dealing with climate change.

• share
• favorite_border

A team of scientists, including those from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), have combined stalagmites and climate model simulations to reveal links between monsoon rains and tropical cyclones in Australia.

• share
• favorite_border

Ocean warming is driving an increase in the frequency and severity of marine heatwaves, causing untold damage to coral reefs. Tropical corals, which live in symbiosis with tiny single celled algae, are sensitive to high temperatures, and exhibit a stress response called bleaching when the ocean gets too hot. In the last 4 decades, marine heatwaves have caused widespread bleaching, and killed millions of corals. Because of this, a global search is underway for reefs that can withstand the heat stress, survive future warming, and act as sources of heat-tolerant coral larvae to replenish affected areas both naturally and through restoration.

• share
• favorite_border

Wandering albatrosses are highly adapted to long-distance soaring flight, assisted by a wingspan of up to 11 feet -the largest known of any living bird. They use the winds to soar thousands of miles seeking food to bring back to nourish their chicks. Researchers are unlocking new clues about how these iconic birds are such amazing flyers.

• share
• favorite_border

When scientists discovered a hydrothermal vent site in the Arctic Ocean’s Aurora hydrothermal system in 2014, they did not immediately realize just how exciting their discovery was.

• share
• favorite_border

Today, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) announced that emperor penguins have been listed as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) based on evidence that the animal's sea ice habitat is shrinking and is likely to continue to do so over the next several decades. This listing comes more than one year after a USFWS proposal to list the species, and confirms that the animal is at risk of becoming an endangered species--in danger of extinction--in the foreseeable future if its habitat continues to be destroyed or adversely changed.

• share
• favorite_border

Today, Propeller , a climate-tech fund that invests in and builds ocean-climate companies, announced its inaugural $100 million fund to support founders looking to address the climate crisis by advancing planet-saving, ocean-based science and technology solutions.