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CAPE COD TIMES

WHOI grants will change ocean research

August 23, 2007

WOODS HOLE – The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution was officially presented with more than $100 million in grants this morning, which WHOI officials said will forever change the way ocean research is conducted.

Dozens of high profile researchers and politicians gathered on Dyers Dock in Woods Hole this morning as WHOI officials accepted the largest single monetary award in the institution’s history.

The money will be used for a system of multimillion dollar surface buoys which will have wireless connections to a sea lab on the ocean floor. Each lab will house an autonomous underwater vehicle, controlled remotely by scientists, which collect data and transmit information back to scientists on shore in real time.

The National Science Foundation’s Ocean Observatories Initiative awarded WHOI with $97.7 million for the project. The Massachusetts Technology Collaborative’s John Adams Innovation Institute added an additional $10 million grant.

The ocean observing system will help with everything from mitigating oil spills to better predicting the weather, state officials said.

“The information revolution has come to the ocean,” said U.S. Rep. William Delahunt, D-Mass.