Deep Dive Into Ocean Science: Knight Science Journalism at Woods Hole

Thirteen newly christened sea dogs in the Nereid remotely operated vehicle shed at WHOI.
Thirteen newly christened sea dogs in the Nereid remotely operated vehicle shed at WHOI.
By KSJ@MIT May 09, 2017
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The M.I.T. Knight Science Journalism Fellows spent Thursday, May 4, discovering MBL research.

After lunch, it was time for cuttlefish.

So 13 of us — the 2016-17 KSJ fellows, a spouse, and staff members — crowded around a pair of tray-like tanks at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, to watch the senior scientist Roger Hanlon demonstrate the astonishing ability of these cephalopods to alter their skin colors at will. Before our eyes, as they flashed through the tanks, they changed from mahogany-brown to a luminous, ghostly white to Abstract Expressionist patterns of black outlines on a shifting light background.

In the MBL-WHOI library’s rare books room: Fabio Turone, Bettina Urcuioli celebrating her Nobel Prize (well, probably T.H. Morgan’s), Mark Wolverton.
In the MBL-WHOI library’s rare books room: Fabio Turone, Bettina Urcuioli celebrating her Nobel Prize (well, probably T.H. Morgan’s), Mark Wolverton. Photos: Chloé Hecketsweiler (left and right), Lauren M. Whaley (center).

Before that display, Hanlon had treated us to a TED Talk-like lecture about his specialty, marine camouflage, including a for-the-ages video that accompanied a paper in The American Naturalist with the startling title “Dramatic Fighting by Male Cuttlefish for a Female Mate.”

Sally Deneen, Robert McClure, Lauren Whaley, and Meera Subramanian on the Gemma.
Sally Deneen, Robert McClure, Lauren Whaley, and Meera Subramanian on the Gemma. Photos: Fabio Turone, Lauren M. Whaley.

It was just one highlight in the two-day reel that was the annual KSJ visit to Woods Hole on May 4 and 5. “Two intensive days of learning in which we traveled, at the most pure style of Captain Nemo, to the depths of the ocean,” as fellow Iván Carrillo put it. Read more of the article here ...

Source: A Deep Dive Into Ocean Science: Knight Science Journalism at Woods Hole