News
“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.…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 …
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…
Middle schoolers soak up information like sponges. Introducing them to different subjects and activities feeds their curiosity, helps them discover their interests, and can influence their future career choices. That’s one reason a WHOI Sea Grant-funded research team spent a day in Chatham …