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WHOI - Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

Dec. 9, 2006

Rep: Bob Beardsley

Faculty/Staff Changes:

Director Bob Gagosian stepped down this summer, and Jim Luyten has been appointed Acting Director. Larry Madin has been appointed Acting Associate Director of Research, and Cabell Davis the new Director of the Ocean Life Institute. John Farrington has also retired and Jim Yoder is now Dean of the WHOI Education Program.

New Research Activities / Highlights

1. The U.S. GLOBEC/Georges Bank phase 4B synthesis effort started this summer, with five groups funded through NSF and NOAA (http://globec.whoi.edu/globec-dir/phase4doc/project-titles_phase4B.html). Cabell Davis is leading the WHOI effort, which includes investigators from UMass-Dartmouth, URI, UHN, UMaine, and SUNY-SB.

2. A combined field and model study of the physical oceanography and biology of Nantucket Sound started this summer with funding from MIT and WHOI Sea Grant. (Contact Dick Limeburner and Scott Gallager for details).

(http://www.whoi.edu/science/PO/Nobska_Mooring/) 3. The USGS has started a study of the structure of Middle Ground and sediment transport processes on this large sand bank located in Vineyard Sound between Martha’s Vineyard and Woods Hole. (Contact Rich Signell for details).

4. VisIT is a open-source user-friendly interface for interactive visualization of unstructured grid data developed by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (http://www.llnl.gov/visit/). VisIT makes it easy to plot model results, sections, surfaces, make animations. David Stuebe has worked with the VisIT development team so that the current and future releases will facilitate using VisIT to read FVCOM model output in NETCDF format. (Contact David dstuebe@mit.edu for details)

5. Researchers at WHOI and colleagues from seven other universities or agencies began the five-year Gulf of Maine Toxicity program, or GOMTOX, September 1. The program is funded by a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration‘s (NOAA) National Ocean Service, Center for Sponsored Coastal Ocean Research (NOS/CSCOR) through the ECOHAB program. The new research effort expands past studies in the Gulf of Maine and builds on data collected during the historic 2005 red tide, which led to closure of both nearshore shellfish beds and offshore beds in federal waters out to Georges Bank. (Contact Don Anderson and Dennis McGillicuddy for details).