When Science and Dance Partner Up

It's not often that scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) find themselves in a ballet studio.

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WHOI Offshore Ocean Observatory Leaves Vineyard Waters

The relocation of the WHOI Pioneer Array from Vineyard waters to North Carolina signals the end of an era for the high-tech system, one of five active stations in the National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative.

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Sail MV Opens Winter Lecture Series

A deep (online) dive with the chief pilot of the Alvin submersible team at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is this season's first winter lecture, Dec. 9.

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Close Encounters of an Oceanic Kind
Maia Coleman

What can the ocean tell us about ourselves? Three raconteurs set out to answer the question last Wednesday night in the most recent installment of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s virtual series.

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In Opportunity of a Lifetime, “Conservation” of Right Whales Recorded in Vineyard Waters
Vineyard Gazette

“Cap’n” Seth Wakeman Jr. of Menemsha reports that representatives of the Oceanographic Institution at Woods Hole got “some of the best whale pictures ever taken,” during a recent visit to the Island. In addition to taking still and movie shots, the scientists also had excellent luck in recording the sounds of the whales which have been seen off Menemsha Bight and Gay Head in recent weeks.

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NSF Grant Includes Observatory Off Edgartown
Alex Elvin

The Martha’s Vineyard Coastal Observatory has become part of a new long-term program aimed at better understanding ocean ecosystems and climate change.

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James Cameron's Deepsea Challenger Comes Home to Woods Hole
Mark Alan Lovewell

WOODS HOLE — Urging a group of Chatham middle schoolers to follow their dreams, filmmaker James Cameron handed the keys to the Deepsea Challenger, the only human-occupied vehicle able to reach the deepest parts of the sea, to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in a ceremony Friday morning.
“The things you get excited about today, those will be some of the most important driving forces for you in the future,” Mr. Cameron told the gathering of 12 and 13 year olds who formed a semicircle in front of him.

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Slime Spread Sends Scientists Diving Seas, Searching for Clues
Mark Alan Lovewell

It sounds like a bad science fiction movie: a slime from outer space has reached the earth. It spreads underwater across the harbors and bays of a small Island community and eventually throughout the East Coast. The world’s top scientists gather to study and discuss the problem..

What it sounds like is nearly true in the waters along the eastern seaboard, only in this case the slime is believed to come from the Sea of Japan.

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Snow Falling Beneath the Sea, And Other Antarctic Wonders
Peter Brannen

Think Antarctica and you think snow. A vast and unending, featureless panorama of it.

Andrew McDonnell, a PhD student at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and MIT, traveled to the Palmer U.S. Research Station in Antarctica to see snow, but not on land. Instead Mr. McDonnell was interested in the timeless undersea blizzard of particulate matter known as marine snow, the ghostly detritus of animals that descends the water column, sometimes taking months to reach the bottom.

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Survey Begins Of Katama Bay
Peter Brannen

This month scientists from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution will descend on Edgartown with a sonar-equipped waverunner to map, in unprecedented resolution, the ever-shifting sands and currents of Katama Bay. While the bathymetry of the body of water, where change is a constant feature, is of special scientific interest to the Woods Hole scientists, the information is even more valuable for the surprising underwriter of the project: the U.S. Department of Defense.

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