Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution: Status and Plans

Summary

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) was founded in 1930 as a private, nonprofit research laboratory dedicated to prosecute oceanography in all its branches. The impetus for its founding was a study by the United States National Academy of Science which pointed out the importance to the nation of the then fledgling field, and recommended the establishment on the east coast of an institution which could both develop its own critical mass of multidisciplinary scientific talent, and make the heavy investment in ships and facilities needed to spur on the field as a whole. Its special expertise was to be its ability to make and interpret state-of-the-art measurements at sea.

WHOI today remains true to its initial charge, both to conduct ocean science and education at the frontier of knowledge and to support the oceanographic community as a whole. WHOI in 1991 has a staff of approximately 1,000, including 140 on the scientific staff and 130 students in the graduate joint program with MIT, and an annual budget of over $70 million. We operate three major research ships, two national facilities — the 4,000-m-capable manned submersible ALVIN and the new Ocean Science Accelerator Mass Spectrometer — and a wide range of seagoing vehicles and instrumentation.

WHOI’s forte is the study of ocean process based on measurements at sea. Five disciplinary departments — Biology, Chemistry, Geology and Geophysics, Physical Oceanography, and Applied Ocean Physics and Engineering — are complemented by centers devoted to coastal processes, marine policy, and deep ocean exploration. One of WHOI’s special skills is the development of instrumentation for at sea data collection, and many of today’s standards originated in our laboratories.