Ocean Ecology: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution 

I was inspired by the reading from the book but after looking at their website I grew even more interesting. They have a lot of great options at their facility and they have a lot of research vessels, equipment, history and more. They have very skilled engineers and technicians that are able to make a lot of discoveries about the ocean.

The ships and vehicles are safe and very reliable, allowing the researchers to go to sea and return successfully. They had several ships (I have to admit, I was most interested in Atlantis due to its name). After reading about Atlantis, I found it particularly interesting. It is able to help support Alvin and other National Deep Submergency Facility vehicles.

Doing deep sea research is of particular interest to me. This really intrigued me. It is researching hydrothermal vents in the Pacific Ocean, which is one of my favorite subjects! This really intrigued me and drew me. However, Atlantis is usually busy and not really ever at Woods Hole. Knorr has a “long-coring” system to analyze sea bed data. This is also very interesting to me, since we will learn a lot about how the floor is composed and formed. I also thought the HROV Nerieid Under Ice system intrigues me as well, since I am interested in many ice-margin locations, especially where narwhals can be found.

This school has an excellent educational resource system. They have graduate, postdoctoral and undergraduate programs. They have a lot of areas they research, both locations and subfields in the subject. They have departments, centers and labs, with over 400 engineers and scientists. They have four Ocean institutes for research. They provide programs, projects, distribute technology information, provide facilities, services and collect and distribute data.

I was very interested in the options at Monterey Bay Aquarium Research since they are very active and competitive as an educational location. They also do deep water exploration, as it is nearby them unlike Woods Hole which needs to send Atlantis to do projects like that. They have excellent genetic diversity in their local oceans. They also have a variety of ships and vessels although maybe not as advanced. They have a postdoctoral program although it may not be as highly recognized as programs through Woods Hole. They are located in California, which is much closer than than Woods Hole.

Another facility I was interested in was the Hopkins Marine Station which is a lot smaller than Woods Hole. They have a great Machine Life Observatory to gather long-term, consistent data to determine the health of the local ecological ecosystem much like Woods Hole. It analyzes this data and determines the diversity of the microbes to large animals. I like their focus on the biology although they may share that in common with Woods Hole. They research the physical characteristics of the marine location. They determine waves, sea surface height, light, oxygen, temperature, salinity and more as they gather information. They make data publications available for continued research and reference.