Recently added articles from Oceanus:
An unorthodox but highly successful marriage: the MIT/WHOI Joint Program celebrates its 40th anniversary.(Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Dec 01, 2008 ... [ILLUSTRATIONS OMITTED] It was 1968. On university campuses, the Beatles blared from dorm-room stereos, and VW Beetles infested parking lots. The times were a-changing, and they were ripe for bold initiatives. Few initiatives are as bold as an unorthodox ...
A tale of two oceans, and the monsoons: tiny seafloor shells could offer big clues to the forces that generate rainfall.(Pacific and the Indian Oceans)(Report)
Dec 01, 2008; ... Every summer, the continent of Asia takes a big breath. This inhalation pulls moisture-laden air from the Indian Ocean over India and Southeast Asia, causing torrential rains known as the monsoons. For as long as there have been people in India and Southeast Asia, lives have been set by ...
One man's swamp is a fish's nursery: the ear bones of fish provide clues to help protect critical habitats for juvenile coral reef fish.(Cover story)
Dec 01, 2008; ... A parade of schoolmaster snappers swim by me, their neon yellow fins directing traffic. Echoing in the background is the rhythmic crunch of striped parrotfish nibbling on coral polyps. I'm chasing brightly colored coral reef fish through turquoise waters during a childhood vacation to the ...
Biochemical warfare on coral reefs: in a coevolutionary struggle, invertebrate adversaries develop weapons and counterweapons.(Report)
Dec 01, 2008; ... Just beneath the tranquil, clear waters of the tropical Caribbean, unseen by all but a few keen-eyed divers, two foes have engaged in a life-and-death struggle every day for thousands of millennia. Their limestone battlefield is peppered with limitless varieties of soft coral that look ...
Listening in as bacteria 'talk' to each other: a graduate student investigates the microbial mysteries of quorum sensing.(Report)
Dec 01, 2008; ... The 27th of January, at the entrance of the vast Bay of Bengal ... about seven o'clock in the evening, the Nautilus ... was sailing in a sea of milk .... Was it the effect of the lunar rays? No: for the moon ... was still lying hidden under the horizon .... The whole sky, though lit by the ...
Testing the waters and closing beaches: researchers search for faster, better methods to detect harmful bacteria.
Dec 01, 2008; ... On a warm, tranquil evening last summer, Falmouth resident Annette Hynes took a friend down to Wood Neck Beach. It is one of Annette's favorite local beaches, with a long, lovely, shallow slope, a grassy marsh and dunes, and rocks covered in periwinkles. That evening, the women slipped ...
The turtle and the robot: an old sea turtle teaches a young engineer a thing or two about swimming.
Dec 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Stephen Licht built an unusual underwater robot with a curious name. With a wink toward James Joyce, he named it Finnegan, because he was particularly interested in studying the wake made by the robot as it moved through water. Instead of the ...
How does nature deal with persistent pollutants? Certain chemicals, both man-made and natural, 'biomagnify' up the food chain.(Report)
Dec 01, 2008; ... Why would I choose to spend my years graduate school up to my elbows in foul-smelling whale blubber? To explore how some of the most notorious man-made pollutants reach dangerous concentrations in large predators, even when concentrations of these pollutants in seawater are low and ...
Where do they roam before they grow up to be scallops? A graduate student peers into shellfish larvae's mysterious pathway to adulthood.(Report)
Dec 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] With a cool ocean breeze under a cloud less sky, children weave small sailboats through the channel Larger boats scurry out of Waquoit Bay to fish in Nantucket Sound or spend a day at Martha's Vineyard. People not on the water are hitting tennis balls or ...
Chemical detectives follow nitrogen's elusive and essential trail in the ocean: nitrous oxide: a greenhouse gas that needs watching.(Report)
Dec 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] There's a greenhouse gas whose concentration is on the rise because of human activities. But it's not the one you'd expect. It's nitrous oxide ([N.sub.2]O), also known as laughing gas. It's been accumulating in the atmosphere since the 1700s, and it's ...
Chemical detectives follow nitrogen's elusive and essential trail in the ocean: the 'isotope effect' offers a new way to track nitrogen.
Dec 01, 2008; ... Humans often seem to be unable to fix a problem without creating a new one. We invented DDT to kill mosquitoes and stop the spread of malaria, but almost caused the extinction of bald eagles and other birds. For industry and transportation, we developed fossil fuels, whose greenhouse gas ...
A most ingenious paradoxical plankton: how do seemingly similar organisms coexist in the same ecological niche?(phytoplankton)(Report)
Dec 01, 2008; ... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Everybody has a unique place in the world, a job to do, a niche to fill. When you are a tiny phytoplankter, your place is in the ocean, and your job is photosynthesis. Floating in a seemingly uniform environment like the ocean, how do you stand out and ...
Will climate change disrupt the Arctic ecosystem?(RESEARCH NEWS)
Sep 01, 2008; ... After long, dark winters, sunlight returns to the Bering Sea in spring, relaunching a bountiful food chain that fills the Arctic with life. In March, an ambitious research team, led by biologist Carin Ashjian of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), launched into the Bering Sea to ...
Crack! A lake atop the Greenland Ice Sheet disappears!(RESEARCH NEWS)
Sep 01, 2008; ... In late July 2006, a 2.2-square-mile lake atop the Greenland Ice Sheet sprung a leak. Like a draining bathtub, the entire lake emptied from the bottom, sending water through a crack that reached the base of the ice sheet 3,215 feet below. Most of the 11.6 billion gallons of water in the ...
Breakthroughs provide early warning of harmful algal blooms: automated underwater microscope detects unexpected toxic alga.(RESEARCH NEWS)
Sep 01, 2008; ... An automated underwater microscope developed by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) detected an unexpected bloom of toxic algae in the Gulf of Mexico in February 2008. The fortunate early warning prompted officials to recall shellfish and close down shellfish ...
Breakthroughs provide early warning of harmful algal blooms: researchers successfully forecast large 'red tide' along New England coast.(RESEARCH NEWS)
Sep 01, 2008; ... A research team led by scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) successfully predicted the widespread harmful algal bloom that materialized this year in New England coastal waters. The forecasting method offers officials and shellfish harvesters a new early warning tool ...
Deep under the sea, volcanoes can still blow their tops.(RESEARCH NEWS)
Sep 01, 2008; ... A research team led by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has uncovered evidence of explosive volcanic eruptions on the Arctic Ocean seafloor almost 2.5 miles deep. Scientists did not think volcanoes submerged under such intense water pressure were capable of such violent ...
Knorr skirts ice to search for 'Arctic haze'.(RESEARCH NEWS)(Brief article)
Sep 01, 2008 ... In the late 1950s, pilots flying over the Arctic began having trouble seeing long distances, their vision cut short by a mysterious reddish-brown fog. What they were seeing is now known as "Arctic haze," a mix of dust, black carbon, and chemical pollutants churned out by factories and ...
Scientists uncover unsuspected source of iron in the ocean.(RESEARCH NEWS)(Brief article)
Sep 01, 2008 ... Marine plants need iron to grow, so scientists have long wondered how the element gets into the ocean. Now, they have found an important, previously unsuspected source. Scientists have assumed that phytoplankton blooms are fertilized by iron-containing dust particles blown off ...
A picky eater, the butterfly fish may face extinction.(RESEARCH NEWS)(Brief article)
Sep 01, 2008 ... A beautiful black, white, and yellow butterflyfish, much admired by divers and aquarium keep ers, may be at risk of extinction, scientists have warned. "The irony is that these butterflyfish are widespread around the world, and you'd have thought their chances of survival were ...