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Victoria Preston talks about the ChemYak, an autonomous surface vehicle in an Oceanus feature. “When we think about the power of putting instruments on robotic machines that can place those instruments optimally, it’s so different than the oceanography of just a few decades ago,” says Preston, who is now a postdoctoral investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). “Having access to so much data is changing the game in many fields.”

Michel, an associate scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, was part of a three-person crew aboard the submersible Alvin as it dove down to the Mid-Cayman Rise. Known as the Beebe Hydrothermal Vent Field, these vents exist on the ocean floor where two tectonic plates are separating about a half an inch (15 millimeters) per year south of the Cayman Islands. Read the full CNN article here.

Sylas Horowitz helped to build and retrofit a Blue ROV to be used in the Canadian High Arctic by the Chemical Sensors Lab. In this feature article, Horowitz says, “I want to relate mechanical engineering to sustainability and environmental justice,” they say. “Engineers need to think about how technology fits into the greater societal context of people in the environment. We want our technology to adapt to the society we live in and for people to be able, based on their needs, to interface with the technology.” Read the full feature here.

Eight months ago, the flaming wreck of M/V X-Press Pearl littered the coast of Sri Lanka with waves of burnt and unburnt plastic pellets. Today, the WHOI researchers who helped provide information to responders say the disaster was a unique exercise in international collaboration during plastic spills.

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is home to a diverse team of scientists, engineers, students, communicators and investigators. In celebration of Women’s History Month, we are shining a spotlight on a few women featured in the last several months, who have made a difference in the fields of science and discovery.

To help track the harmful algae bloom, Pixa, along with WHOI engineer Kevin Manganini and advisor, Associate Scientist and Chief Scientist for Deep Submergence Anna Michel, designed a drifter to float with sargassum on ocean currents. 

Watch video from a ROV Jason and AUV Sentry expedition on the Scripps-operated R/V Roger Ravelle to the Guaymas Basin the Gulf of California. This trip was lead by Chief Scientist for Deep Submergence Anna Michel and included scientists from Harvard University, Michigan State University, and the Ensenada Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education in Mexico.

Dr. Anna Michel became Chief Scientist of the National Deep Submergence Facility in 2021. This is her first expedition with Alvin. Read more here.

On a recent cruise to Guaymas Basin, sensors developed by the Chemical Sensors Lab were used to detect methane in the deep sea. “We’re developing this as a tool for exploration,” says Anna Michel, chief scientist for WHOI’s National Deep Submergence Facility and the expedition. “There are a lot of places where methane is being released in the seawater, but we don’t necessarily know where they all are. Our goal is to be able to use these kinds of technologies to actually sniff out what’s happening in these environments.”

The Chemical Sensors Lab helped respond to a massive nurdle spill in Sri Lanka by evaluating the nurldes’ chemical and physical make-up.