A Recent Reversal Discovered in the Response of Greenland’s Ice Caps to Climate Change
Greenland may be best known for its enormous continental scale ice sheet that soars up to 3,000 meters above sea level, whose rapid melting is…
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
What Happens to Marine Life When There Isn’t Enough Oxygen?
In September of 2017, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution postdoctoral scholar Maggie Johnson was conducting an experiment with a colleague in Bocas del Toro off the…
Microbial Predators at Hydrothermal Vents Play Important Role in Deep-Sea Carbon Cycling
Researchers Emphasize the Need for Baseline Information of Microbial Food Webs The hydrothermal vent fluids from the Gorda Ridge spreading center in the northeast Pacific…
$500 Billion: The Staggering Potential Value of Studying the Ocean’s Biological Carbon Pump
The ocean takes up an estimated five to 12 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year through a process known as the biological carbon pump. More…
A Rapidly Changing Arctic: Significantly More Carbon & Nutrients to North Pole
Shelf sediments, freshwater runoff from rivers brings more carbon, nutrients to North Pole. Trace elements may increase with future Arctic melt releasing dissolved organic matter…
Efficiency of the Ocean’s “Biological Carbon Pump” Has Been Drastically Underestimated
The Ocean’s ‘Biological Pump’ Captures Twice as Much Carbon as Expected Every spring in the Northern Hemisphere, the ocean surface erupts in a massive bloom…
Bad News for Nemo: Species Can’t Adapt to Rapid Environmental Changes
The beloved anemone fish popularized by the movies “Finding Nemo” and “Finding Dory” don’t have the genetic capacity to adapt to rapid changes in their…
Six-Year Whale Shark Study Offers New Behavior and Conservation Insights [Video]
International team of marine scientists complete six-year whale shark study The study uses a novel combination of several monitoring techniques, including state-of-the-art acoustic and satellite…
Autonomous Robotic Boats Improve Environmental Sampling at Sea
Autonomous system improves environmental sampling at sea: Robotic boats could more rapidly locate the most valuable sampling spots in uncharted waters. An autonomous robotic system…
Emperor Penguins Marching Towards Extinction Unless Warming Is Slowed
Emperor penguins are some of the most striking and charismatic animals on Earth, but a new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has…
Scientists Thought It Took Thousands of Years for Plastic to Decompose – It May Only Be Decades
A study published by researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) shows that polystyrene, one of the world’s most ubiquitous plastics, may degrade in decades…
Researchers Devise Innovative Method to Accurately Weigh Whales Using Drones
How do you weigh a living whale? The obvious response is very carefully, but scientists can’t exactly put these large marine mammals on a scale….
Scientists Discover “Supercolony” of Adelie Penguins in the Danger Islands
For the past 40 years, the total number of Adélie Penguins, one of the most common on the Antarctic Peninsula, has been steadily declining—or so…
Mysterious Ecosystem May Hold Clues to Alien Life
Scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory reveal that the extreme oasis of life deep in the Caribbean Sea may hold clues to life on other…
Earth Received Most of Its Water Relatively Early from Chondrite-Like Bodies
New research from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution shows that Earth’s water most likely accreted at the same time as the rock, suggesting that Earth received…
New Research Tests Theory that Life Originated at Deep Sea Vents
New research from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution tests the theory that simple metabolic reactions near ancient seafloor hot springs enabled life as we know it…