Posts by Stephanie Murphy
WHOI Sea Grant Launches a New Blog: O-STEAM-Powered Drifters
This October, four ocean drifters made by O-STEAM fellows were launched into Cape Cod Bay. The GPS transmitters on the drifters are tracking their paths in and around the Bay. Our blogger: Margaret Gregory, a MIT-WHOI Joint Program student. As a part of this summer’s O-STEAM fellowship program, Margaret Gregory, a fifth year PhD candidate…
Read MoreWHOI Sea Grant Headlines the State of Wellfleet Harbor Conference
“In my opinion, the beach is a living breathing thing. It changes every day, with every wave. When the wind blows, the beach changes.” That’s what WHOI Sea Grant coastal processes specialist Bryan McCormack told the more than 185 people who filled the auditorium for the 2025 State of Wellfleet Harbor Conference on November 1.…
Read MoreQ&A with Knauss Fellow Lina Taenzer
Hometown: Hanover, New Hampshire. Area of research focus/interest: Aquatic biogeochemistry, coastal adaptation and risk reduction What are you doing during your Knauss Fellowship? I am in NOAA’s Global Ocean Monitoring and Observation office. I am working on a range of projects centered around ocean observations, including an assessment of whether mature ocean observing systems can…
Read MorePost 3: First Drifter Recoveries
We’ve had an exciting few weeks tracking our drifters! As of November 12 two drifters – yellow “Sofia” and teal “Sophia” – have reached shore! Keep reading to find out where they came ashore and who found them. The other two – purple “Maddie” and red “Athvika” – are still drifting but have exited Cape…
Read MorePost 2: Our First Deployment
We released our first set of four drifters into Cape Cod Bay on Friday (10/24/2025)! We had planned to deploy them a few days earlier, but weather conditions prevented us from going out. We finally had a window on Friday – which, unfortunately, was a day I was unable to join. So, thank you to…
Read MorePost 1: Building the Drifters
As a part of this summer’s O-STEAM program, I was able to spend a day with the fellows talking about how drifters can be used to study the transport of water within Cape Cod Bay. Drifters have been used by oceanographers to track ocean currents for more than four decades. They’re relatively inexpensive, versatile, and…
Read MoreWhere Have All the Flounder Gone: Scientists use e-DNA to investigate
Resource managers have taken a range of conservation measures to improve the southern New England’s winter flounder population, including reduced catch limits and restrictions on dredging in their spawning habitat. Despite these steps, winter flounder stocks remain low. Scientists from the Massachusetts Division of Marine Fisheries (MA DMF) want to know why. Eelgrass habitats serve…
Read MoreBuilt Like a Tank, Lost to the Tide: How one Wellfleet house became a cautionary tale for coastal communities
In 2010, owners of a property on Chequessett Neck Road in Wellfleet were permitted to remove their home and replace it with a 5800 square foot home in the grand Cape Cod style: five bedrooms, five bathrooms, two stone chimneys, a turreted sunroom, and an expansive porch. Sitting on a bluff 20-feet above the beach…
Read MoreFrom Facebook Feed to Shellfish Farm: An intern’s journey
On a rainy December morning, I sat inside a small trailer in a gravel lot in Fairhaven. The trailer belongs to Dale Leavitt, whose oyster farm extends for 47 acres just off shore of the lot. We are on a little spit of an island between Fairhaven proper and a road that extends onto West Island, more than half of which is a state reserve …
Read MoreUtah Unây: Pooling traditional knowledge and modern robotics
How might we supplement the observations Indigenous communities have been making of the environment over generations with robotic tools? What value might sensor systems, which can sample frequently and at very fine scales, contribute to this rich historical record of our changing climate? These questions and more were the focus of a weekend workshop for…
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