Recently added articles from Oceanus:

Engineers design a tag that fits to a manatee.(RESEARCH NEWS)

Apr 01, 2008; Nevala, Amy E. ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When boats hit manatees, the grim consequences often include broken bones and sliced skins. Despite regulations designed to prevent collisions, dozens of manatees in Florida continue to be injured or killed--including a near-record 86 deaths in 2006. ...

WHOI vessel helps search for wreck of John Paul Jones' ship.(Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution )

Apr 01, 2008; Nevala, Amy E. ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] One of the fiercest battles of the Revolutionary War raged off the coast of Flamborough Head, England, on Sept. 23, 1779, pitting the American ship Bonhomme Richard against the British HMS Serapis. During almost 31A hours of combat, the American captain, ...

Coral catastrophe on the Corner Rise Seamounts.(coral destruction)

Apr 01, 2008; Kusek, Kristen M. ... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] A research team has found that deep-sea coral communities that provide lush habitats for fish and other marine life have been extensively damaged, mostly likely by deep-sea fishing trawlers, atop two undersea mountains in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean ....

New microbe species discovered.(Some things new under the sea)(Brief article)

Apr 01, 2008 ... In the quest to explore the remarkable diversity of microbial life on Earth, a German-American team of scientists has discovered seafloor bacteria (right) that can "eat" natural gases such as ethane, propane, and butane--and in a previously unknown way: without oxygen. The bacteria use ...

Evidence for undersea origins of life.(Brief article)

Apr 01, 2008 ... Scientists have discovered that hydrocarbons--essential building blocks of life--are naturally generated at the bottom of the ocean. The researchers examined rocks from a seafloor hydrothermal vent field called "Lost City" (right), near the summit of the Atlantis Massif, a curious dome ...

Old rock woven into new seafloor crust.(Brief article)

Apr 01, 2008 ... A quirky seafloor feature, once considered rare, may be a rather common occurrence that plays a key role in shaping Earth's surface. Scientists had found an intriguing dome on the seafloor, called the Atlantis Massif (right), made of peridotite, a rock usually found deep in Earth's mantle ...

Robot 'paints' a stunning seascape.(ABE, underwater vehicle of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution )

Apr 01, 2008; Kusek, Kristen M. ... Painting with sonar, each brushstroke a "ping" of sound reflected off the seafloor, the robotic underwater vehicle called ABE created a masterpiece of a landscape--one that is submerged about a mile deep in the Pacific Ocean. On an international expedition last summer, ...

Aloha, Nereus.(exploration vehicle of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution )(Brief article)

Apr 01, 2008 ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] After four years of design and construction, WHOI's new deep-sea exploration vehicle Nereus took its first plunge in deeper waters during a test cruise in December 2007 off the Waianae coast of Oahu, Hawaii (above). Nereus is the first underwater vehicle ...

Wonder material? Not so fast.(carbon nanotubes )(Brief article)

Apr 01, 2008 ... They are thousands of times thinner than a single human hair, but stronger than steel, more durable than diamonds, and can efficiently conduct heat and electricity. No wonder carbon nanotubes (below) have been hailed as a wunderkind material that will provide the building blocks for ...

Investigating whale deaths.(Brief article)

Apr 01, 2008 ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] When the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration asked WHOI biologist Michael Moore to help investigate mysterious and alarming whale deaths in October 2007, he hastened to the tip of South America with whale expert colleagues Katie Touhey (Cape ...

Mining the origins of life.(Brief article)

Apr 01, 2008 ... From the nebulous roots and trunk on the tree of life, the three known fundamental domains of life branched out billions of years ago: bacteria, eukaryotes, and archaea. Exactly when that monumental evolutionary divergence occurred has remained unknown, but a team of scientists has now ...

DNA in shipwrecked jars reveals clues into ancient civilizations.(Brief article)

Apr 01, 2008; Lippsett, Lonny ... Scraping inside clay jars recovered from a 2,400-year-old shipwreck, two researchers found DNA fragments that revealed the jars' long-disappeared probable cargo: oregano, olive oil, and wine. The genetic technique, developed by Maria Hansson and Brendan Foley, offers a new ...

The oceans are also feeling the effects from acid rain.(RESEARCH NEWS)

Apr 01, 2008; Carlowicz, Mike ... The release of sulfur and nitrogen into the atmosphere by power plants and agricultural activities is making seawater more acidic, especially in coastal waters, according to a study published September 2007 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "Acid rain isn't ...

This is a job for the Vibracorer.(Brief article)

Apr 01, 2008 ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THIS IS A JOB FOR THE VlBRACORER--Scientists usually use large corers to penetrate seafloor sediments and extract samples used to decipher ocean changes far back in Earth's history. But a particularly hard-packed area off the New Jersey coast required ...

Undersea device stands ready to catch an eddy.(Submerged Autonomous Launch Platforms)

Apr 01, 2008; Madin, Kate ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Amy Bower wanted to investigate an elusive and unpredictable phenomenon in a remote ocean. Off the west coast of Greenland, large, spinning rings of warm water, called eddies, occasionally form in the ocean, like dust devils in the wind, and drift intact ...

Success at sea: new system restores U.S. capacity to take long seafloor cores.

Apr 01, 2008; Nevala, Amy E. ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Over five years, engineers had designed, built, and tested components for a new, one-of-a-kind system to extend the length of sediment samples cored from the seafloor. In September 2007, they took it to sea to find out if the new coring system installed on ...

Plumbing the plume that created Samoa: a graduate student explores the magmatic origins of island chains.(Matthew Jackson's geological research)

Apr 01, 2008; Nevala, Amy E. ... Matthew Jackson began his journey to the center of the Earth on lonely gravel roads in Montana. Uninterested in motorcycles and horses, and miles from neighbors and friends, Jackson roamed on his family's 6,000-acre cattle ranch an hour north of Yellowstone Park and flanked by ...

Stranded animals stir tough decisions: experts propose guidelines for when to rehabilitate, release, and euthanize.

Apr 01, 2008; Madin, Kate ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A seal, sick or injured, is found stranded on a beach. What to do depends on whom you ask. Animal welfare advocates would urge efforts to help the disabled animal. Scientists might want to rehabilitate, release, and track it to learn more about ...

The ice above, the fire down below.(testing of underwater vessels)

Apr 01, 2008; Lippsett, Lonny ... In the summer of 2007, an international team led by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution sailed to the Arctic Ocean aboard the Swedish icebreaker Oden. Their dual missions: to test experimental vehicles specially designed and built by WHOI engineers for use in ice-covered ...

Intriguing discoveries.(seafloor microbes)(Brief article)

Apr 01, 2008 ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In the end, researchers spent the same amount of time aboard Oden as Noah spent on his ark: 40 days and nights (well, make that 40 days and no nights, MIT/WHOI graduate student Clay Kunz pointed out). The researchers did not find hydrothermal vents, but ...