Summer is here and Monterey Bay is teeming with life. Spring upwelling brings an abundance of plankton that provides a feast for all sorts of animals in the months that follow. First come silvery anchovies, then bigger predators like salmon and humpback whales. We’ve spotted whales just offshore from our facilities in Moss Landing. Tune into our Ocean Soundscape listening room and you might just catch the underwater symphony of humpbacks. Monterey Bay’s deep submarine canyon drives this seasonal bounty, reminding us of the connection between the ocean’s surface and its depths below.

But the bay isn’t the only thing bustling this summer. This month, for the first time in three years, we welcomed summer interns to MBARI. We’re hosting 18 interns this summer. They’re working on a range of projects, from understanding the effects of ocean acidification to programming autonomous underwater robots for cooperative data collection. Their excitement energizes all of us and boosts our spirits. 

For the love of the deep,

A dazzling diversity of creatures thrive in the largest living space on Earth—the deep sea. Now, you can get an up-close and personal look at them in ultra high-definition 4K thanks to MBARI's deep-sea robots! The ocean and its inhabitants face a rising tide of threats. Pollution, overfishing, and climate change make for an uncertain future. We’re working to understand this incredible habitat and how animals there will navigate these changes. The ocean needs our help. All life—including us—depends on a healthy ocean. Dive in.

The Global Ocean Biogeochemistry Array (GO-BGC) is a five-year project funded by the National Science Foundation to build a global network of floats equipped with chemical and biological sensors to monitor ocean health. The project brings together researchers from MBARI, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of Washington, and Princeton University to build and deploy 500 robotic biogeochemical floats around the globe. The floats can collect data autonomously for more than five years in remote areas and in all seasons, including during winter storms, when shipboard work is limited. This game-changing technology is transforming how oceanographers and climate scientists observe and understand our changing ocean. Read more.

A new study takes a closer look at the lives of gill parasites in midwater cephalopods. Parasites are common in nearly every habitat on Earth, but we know relatively little about the ecology of species that thrive in the ocean’s midwaters. Former MBARI intern Vanessa Stenvers used DNA barcoding and 27 years of ROV video observations to learn more about these super-small stowaways. ⁠Remarkably, the parasites are closely related to a group of parasitic dinoflagellates that appear to have specialized in pelagic hosts, including comb jellies, chaetognaths, larvaceans, and jellies.⁠ Read more.