Personal Perspectives

Comics at Sea: An Antarctic Logbook

For five years, I've had a photograph of Palmer Station, Antarctica, tacked up over...

Personal Perspectives

Deep-sea octocorals: An ecosystem of their own

The deep-sea is a vast part of the world’s ocean. Even today, it often surprises...

Personal Perspectives

Ocean Today Every Full Moon

Our friends at NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) Ocean...

Personal Perspectives

Shipboard Life in the Antarctic

Strapped in to a harness on the back deck of a 230-foot research vessel off the...

Personal Perspectives

How Oil Feeds the Deep Sea

There can be catastrophic results when a large amount of oil is spilled into the...

Personal Perspectives

From Despair to Repair: Protecting Parrotfish Can Help Bring Back Caribbean Coral Reefs

Reef biologists over a certain age are haunted by memories of what glorious places...

Personal Perspectives

Ocean Sampling Day – Taking the Pulse of the World’s Oceans

If you are a bird watcher you have probably heard of the Christmas Bird Count. The...

Personal Perspectives

Little Critters that tell a BIG Story: Benthic Foraminifera and the Gulf Oil Spill

You are not alone if you don’t know what forams (short for foraminifera) are, so...

Personal Perspectives

Humpback Whales in Antarctica: What Are the Whales Doing?

Humpback whales (Megaptera novaengliae) are the most abundant baleen whale in the...

Personal Perspectives

Arctic Sea Ice: A New Low?

At a recent staff meeting a Smithsonian colleague mentioned that one of his...

Personal Perspectives

Five Questions with Nancy Rabalais, Tracking Dead Zones In the Gulf

The Gulf of Mexico is known for one of the world's largest “dead zones"—areas...

Personal Perspectives

Five Questions with Uta Passow, How An Oil Spill Affects the Movement of Carbon In the Ocean

There are millions of tiny drifting plants in the sunlit ocean, called...