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Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution honored with IEEE Milestone for Technical Innovation and Excellence

October 28, 2022 — The following was released by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution:

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) has been recognized by IEEE, the world’s largest technical professional organization advancing technology, through its Milestone program for the long-running success of its human-occupied submersible Alvin.

The Milestone program honors significant technical achievements in all areas associated with IEEE. Milestones recognize the technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity found in unique products, services, papers, and patents. Each Milestone recognizes a significant technical achievement that occurred at least 25 years ago in an area of technology represented in IEEE and having at least regional impact. To date, more than 240 Milestones have been approved and dedicated around the world.

“Alvin’s significance to ocean science was, and continues to be, far reaching and profound,” said Anna Michel, Chief Scientist of Deep Submergence for the National Deep Submergence Facility at WHOI, the National Science Foundation-funded group that oversees Alvin’s operation. “It opened new avenues of research and discoveries in oceanography and evolutionary biology, and this IEEE Milestone commemorates the decades of Alvin’s engineering breakthroughs that made these scientific discoveries possible and that allow the sub to remain at the leading edge of deep-ocean research.”

Milestones can be nominated by any IEEE member, and after recommendation by the IEEE History Committee and approval by the IEEE Board of Directors, a bronze plaque commemorating the achievement is placed at an appropriate site with an accompanying dedication ceremony.

Alvin is named after Allyn Vine, the WHOI physicist and instrument developer who provided the creative vision to build the sub beginning in the 1950s. The U.S. Navy commissioned Alvin in 1965 and continues to support the submersible program. In the years that followed, engineers used Alvin as the motivation to develop acoustical navigation (ALNAV), communications, photographic, lighting, and life support systems specifically intended for use in the deep ocean. Over the years, Alvin has become one of the most widely used research submersibles in the world, amassing more than 5,100 dives over 57 years and undergoing periodic improvements that have repeatedly extended and improved its capabilities.

Alvin is well known for supporting exploration of the wreckage of HMS Titanic, leading the discovery of the effects of seafloor environmental conditions on microbial communities, and providing access to hydrothermal vents that revolutionized scientists’ understanding of life on Earth. It even helped recover a lost hydrogen bomb in the Mediterranean Sea less than a year after it was commissioned.

Alvin continues to evolve–and to make history. In August 2022, after a two-year overhaul and upgrade, Alvin returned to scientific research with a new maximum depth of 6500 meters (4 miles). The added range puts roughly 99% of the seafloor within reach of the world’s longest-operating, most active, and, by many measures, most successful human-occupied submersible program in the world.

“The Alvin Team are proud and honored to uphold the tradition of Deep Submergence at WHOI with this vastly improved submersible,” said NDSF Director Andy Bowen. “Going to such extreme depths and exploring the ocean inside Alvin is anything but routine—and the fact that we do so with such regularity and success is a testament to the engineering excellence that Alvin embodies.”

The Milestone plaque will be mounted at ​​WHOI’s Smith Laboratory, which currently houses the team that oversees the sub’s operation.

Woods Hole Partnership Examines Possible Sea-Level Rise

October 10, 2022 — A local partnership presented their plans for helping Woods Hole adapt to rising sea levels at a recent meeting of the Falmouth Select Board.

Resilient Woods Hole is a private-public collaboration to prepare the village for sea-level rise, flooding, and shoreline loss.

The initiative is led by a partnership between Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) and NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

Project Manager Leslie-Ann McGee said local businesses, community groups, and other stakeholders are all part of Resilient Woods Hole’s steering committee.

The group received a grant from the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management for recent community outreach including adaptation workshops and stakeholder surveys.

The surveys involved presenting residents with different options for adaptations like constructing hard structures or taking a more natural approach. The forms also asked if people wanted to retreat or live with water.

Read the full article at CapeCod.com

World Leaders in Ocean Science and Philanthropy Come Together to Create First-ever Ocean Pavilion at UN Climate Conference

October 7, 2022 — The following was released by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution:

A group of the world’s leading ocean science and philanthropic 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 27th Conference of the Parties (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.

The Ocean Pavilion in the conference’s official meeting area will highlight the crucial importance of the ocean to Earth’s climate and to efforts to mitigate the effects of climate change in the safest, most effective ways science can offer. It will also be the first time the ocean has been the singular focus of a pavilion inside the central “Blue Zone” at any COP and the first time a pavilion has been organized principally by a group of research institutions.

“Earth is an ocean planet,” said WHOI President and Director Peter de Menocal. “The ocean gives us the oxygen we breathe, the water we drink and the food we eat. It also provides jobs for billions of people, including many of the world’s most vulnerable. It’s only natural that the ocean should also be at the center of discussions about the sustainability of human activity on Earth, including how it can help stabilize the global climate system at a safe level.”

“The ocean is the engine of Earth’s climate,” said Margaret Leinen, Director of Scripps Oceanography, and Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences at UC San Diego. “We know that it has absorbed 90% of the heat produced by human activity since the dawn of the industrial age and it holds 20 times more carbon than the atmosphere and terrestrial plants combined. Put simply, the ocean is climate, and the climate is the ocean.”

The Ocean Pavilion will serve as a central hub for conference delegates to exchange ideas about how to address climate change by leveraging the ocean. Throughout the conference, held from November 6 to 18, the pavilion will feature events, meetings, and in-depth discussions that elaborate on the daily conference themes and that explore issues surrounding COP27’s overarching goal of implementing the commitments made by nations in the wake of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. Visitors to the pavilion will also be able learn more about the work of Ocean Pavilion partners and to speak with scientists engaged in the search for solutions to some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

The annual COP meetings bring together world leaders and climate experts from nearly 200 countries, as well as leaders in industry, trade, transportation, finance, labor, and more to focus on the shared mission of meeting the commitments made under the Paris Agreement. Under the agreement, countries pledged to collectively cut their greenhouse gas emissions enough to keep the planet from warming by no more than 1.5–2° C (2.7–3.6° F) relative to pre-industrial times. Progress toward those goals has lagged and, as a result, the planet has already warmed by about 1°C, lending even greater urgency to the search for safe, effective solutions to reduce the upward march of global temperatures.

In order to keep warming below the thresholds stated in the Paris Agreement, scientists are growing increasingly vocal about the need to greatly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and, at the same time, develop and deploy methods of removing more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than human activities produce. To succeed, this strategy, known as “net negative emissions,” will require large-scale, nature-based solutions. Because the ocean makes up more than two-thirds of Earth’s surface, achieving that goal will almost certainly require leveraging the natural ocean processes that already influence the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A 2022 study by the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine highlighted six promising methods, but concluded that, for any method to be successful, science must lead the way in determining the most appropriate set of solutions that help society meet its targets without adversely affecting the ocean.

At the same time, the ocean can also help address a much broader array of challenges faced by people around the world, including food security, energy production, water management, and economic growth. For that reason, the United Nations recently established the Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development, and convened the 2022 United Nations Ocean Conference in Lisbon to emphasize that the world community needs to focus efforts on better understanding the ocean in order to unlock solutions worldwide.

These events, coupled with the deepening climate crisis, prompted WHOI and Scripps to band together and invite a wide range of partners to the task of “bringing the blue to the Blue Zone” at COP27. The partners include a diverse and growing collection of global leaders in ocean science, engineering, policy, and philanthropy–perspectives that are crucial to gaining the insights needed to surmount the many challenges facing society today.

In addition to Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Scripps Institution of Oceanography, Ocean Pavilion partners include American Geophysical Union (AGU), Avatar Alliance Foundation, Blue Marine Foundation, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), French National Research Institute for Ocean Science and Technology (IFREMER), Minderoo Foundation, Monaco Scientific Center, National Institute of Oceanography and Fisheries-Egypt (NIOF), National Oceanography Centre (NOC), Ocean Policy Research Institute (OPRI), OceanX, Pacific Islands Forum, Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean (POGO), Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), The Ocean Race, and UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission, the coordinating agency of the UN Ocean Decade.

The Ocean Pavilion will also be open to other groups attending COP27 to propose events during the conference that will broaden the conversation about what the ocean can do for the planet and what humans can do to protect the ocean.

“Ocean science is emblematic of the way we will see our way out of the climate crisis,” said Leinen. “We succeed by looking for solutions together on this ocean planet we call home.” “The ocean is too big and too complicated for any one organization to go it alone,” said de Menocal. “We will only succeed by joining diverse perspectives to find solutions together.”

More information about the Ocean Pavilion, including ways to propose events and programming during COP27, can be found on the pavilion website. Anyone can also sign up to receive emails providing regular ocean-related updates from COP27 Ocean Pavilion.

Study: Smaller Right Whales Have Fewer Calves

May 17, 2022 — A new study from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and New England Aquarium has found that smaller North Atlantic right whales give birth to fewer calves.

The two organizations teamed up with multiple groups, such as the National Marine Fisheries Service and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to find this information.

Teams studied aerial photos of 41 female right whales taken between 2000 and 2019, finding that smaller mothers produced fewer babies.

Read the full story at CapeCod.com

Evidence Bolsters Classification of a Major Spawning Ground for Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Off the Northeast U.S.

March 4, 2022 — The Slope Sea off the Northeast United States is a major spawning ground for Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus), a new paper affirms. This finding likely has important implications for population dynamics and the survival of this fish, according to the paper, “Support for the Slope Sea as a major spawning ground for Atlantic bluefin tuna: evidence from larval abundance, growth rates, and particle-tracking simulations,” published in the Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences.

“Overall, our results provide important supporting evidence that the Slope Sea is a major spawning ground that is likely to be important for population dynamics,” the paper states. Spawning in the Slope Sea “may offer the species additional resilience in the face of both harvesting and climate change,” the paper adds.

The paper presents larval evidence supporting the recognition of the Slope Sea as a major spawning ground, including that larvae collected in the Slope Sea grew at the same rate as larvae collected in the Gulf of Mexico, indicating that this region is good larval habitat.

“In comparison to everything else we know about this species, the Slope Sea is a perfectly good place to be born as a larva,” said lead author Christina Hernández, who was a doctoral student in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) Joint Program in Oceanography/Applied Ocean Science and Engineering at the time of the study.

Read the full story at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Resilient Woods Hole releases new, interactive tools to engage community in planning for climate change

February 22, 2022 — ResilientWoodsHole (RWH), a public-private initiative led by local science institutions, today released new, interactive website tools to further engage the local community in its collective goal of securing a climate-resilient future for the coastal village of Woods Hole.  An updated website, ResilientWoodsHole.org, provides status updates, news coverage and reports on these efforts.  A new stakeholder survey, for individuals to learn more about how they can offer input, is now on the website.

Also new are three interactive maps for public engagement. Each map highlights a different aspect of Woods Hole:  Important Features, Adaptation and Vision, and Flooding Risk. People can click on any of these three maps and input comments and suggestions in each of these key areas.

Links to both the survey and interactive maps can be found on the RWH website.

A recent public workshop held by RWH engaged more than 100 local community members in a dialogue about coastal flooding risks, identified village flood pathways and vulnerabilities, and discussed long-term adaptation strategies.

“Building on the success of our first visioning workshop, it is clear that the future of Woods Hole as a seaside community, blue economy driver, and home to world renowned ocean research organizations, lies collectively in our hands,” said Leslie-Anne McGee, manager of ResilientWoodsHole and a project manager at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. “Working with the community, it is our goal to prepare for sea-level rise and increasing extreme weather events, and jointly develop solutions.”

This effort is funded through the Massachusetts Office of Coastal Zone Management (CZM),’s Coastal Resilience Grant Program and matching funds from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Marine Biological Laboratory, and NOAA Fisheries.

Read the release from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

 

As Vineyard Wind Moves Forward, Fishermen and Scientists Raise Questions About Impact

November 23, 2021 — The Biden administration has approved America’s first large-scale, offshore wind power project – Vineyard Wind off the coast of Massachusetts. But for every supporter of the project, there are detractors raising questions. Lisa Fletcher looked at the pros and cons of ‘reaping the wind’ on “Full Measure with Sharyl Attkisson.”

Ms. Fletcher examined what the project could mean for New Bedford, Massachusetts, the nation’s top grossing fishing port, and its valuable scallop harvest, which averages around $400 million a year in landings.

“The amount of wind farms they’re proposing will displace fisheries,” said Ron Smolowitz, the owner of Coonamessett Farm in East Falmouth, Massachusetts and a former fishing captain who worked with NOAA. “The fish will adapt, the fishermen can adapt, but they’ll need funding.”

Mr. Smolowitz said that current funding proposed by Vineyard Wind to compensate fishermen for their losses is “nowhere near enough.” The proposed funding would average roughly $1 million a year over the 30-year life span of the project, Mr. Smolowitz said, while one scallop vessel alone can gross $2 million annually, and there are 342 scallop vessels. “And that’s just one fishery,” he said.

Ms. Fletcher also examined other obstacles for the project, including the potential threat to critically endangered North Atlantic right whales.

“The industrial activity will increase shipping markedly both during the construction phase as well as during the maintenance phase,” said Mark Baumgartner, senior scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Mr. Baumgartner said he and his team are working on deploying acoustic monitoring, with funding from Vineyard Wind, to help prevent ship strikes with right whales.

Watch the full story here

‘No easy answers’ WHOI building project designed for sea-level rise

August 26, 2021 — The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is one of the leading organizations focused on ocean research, exploration and education. Its vessels roam the world’s oceans, their researchers explore the deepest oceanic canyons and the shallows of a salt marsh.

For an institution that has experienced, researched and documented the impacts of climate change on the ocean, it follows that when it contemplated building a new $100 million dock and waterfront support facilities, WHOI would incorporate sea-level rise into their planning.

“This is critical infrastructure to what we do,” said Rob Munier, WHOI vice president for marine facilities and operations. “Others can contemplate alternatives, including retreat (from the waterfront), but we have to be there. It’s part of our ability to do our mission.”

Read the full story at the Cape Cod Times

New buoy could help scientists protect whales from wind farm construction off the coast of Ocean City

August 5, 2021 — Each day, they appear as colorful blips on a black graph. The dispatches from a new buoy 23 miles off the coast of Ocean City, Maryland, could be nothing more than noise from passing ships or rough waves. But they could be whales.

It’s up to researchers at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science to tell the difference.

In groups of three, the small sound waves might be sei whales. A symphonic pattern of notes could be humpbacks — the “songbirds of the sea,” said Amber Fandel, a faculty research assistant with the center’s Chesapeake Biological Laboratory.

The buoy’s algorithm, developed by researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, often thinks it’s discovered passing baleens. But the discerning eye of a researcher knows best. The hydrophone aboard the bright yellow and blue buoy, with brethren up and down the East Coast, hasn’t tracked a whale since it was plopped in the water in late May, though some are expected as the fall draws closer, Fandel said.

Lately, the scientists’ work has taken on fresh urgency. The buoy is located in the 80,000-acre lease area carved out for the MarWin wind farm. Construction on the win farm is likely to start sometime in 2024, officials said, and could present dangers to marine mammals.

Read the full story at The Baltimore Sun

Large vessels failing to obey speed limits to protect endangered whales, report finds

July 22, 2021 — Nearly 90 percent of large vessels traveling in some conservation areas along the East Coast violated mandatory speed limits established to protect endangered North Atlantic right whales, according to a new report.

The findings raised questions about the need for stricter enforcement of federal rules to protect right whales, whose numbers have fallen by about 25 percent over the past decade to roughly 360. Vessel strikes and entanglements in fishing gear have been the primary cause of death and serious injuries.

“Vessels are speeding, North Atlantic right whales are dying, and there’s not enough accountability,” said Whitney Webber, a campaign director at Oceana, an advocacy group, which released the report on Wednesday. “Oceana’s analysis shows that speeding vessels are rampant throughout North Atlantic right whales’ migration route, all along the East Coast, and in both mandatory and voluntary speed zones.”

Between 2017 and 2020, the report found that nearly 90 percent of vessels 65 feet or larger failed to reduce their speeds to 10 knots or less in the required speed zones along the coast from Wilmington, N.C., to Brunswick, Ga., near the whales’ calving grounds. Nearly 80 percent of the vessels also failed to comply with speed limits along the coasts of New York and New Jersey, while more than half of large vessels failed to comply near the entrance of Delaware Bay.

Read the full story at The Boston Globe