Engineer Thom Maughan created a lot of buzz at MBARI when he left a blue fiberglass shark fin in the upstairs lobby.

Five axes are better than three when it comes to milling parts for complex technology. Ray Thompson, MBARI’s machine shop supervisor, remarked that a 5-axis machine allows our scientists and engineers to “design around the technology”.

The smallest member of the MBARI seagoing fleet, the R/V Paragon, often runs multiple missions in a day.

Over the past week, a team of engineers from the Schmidt Ocean Institute (SOI) have been testing their new remotely operated vehicle (ROV), SuBastian, in MBARI’s test tank.

About a week ago, MBARI marine chemists Hans Jannasch and Ken Johnson went on a little boat ride, chasing an open-ocean profiling float that was drifting in the California Current, about 100 miles offshore.

MBARI Scientist Ken Johnson and his Chemical Sensors Group are part of a large collaborative effort to place sensors in the Southern Ocean to monitor changing conditions. The video explains the technology used in this project.

A large piece of surplus MBARI equipment will go a long way to helping some local students. In early March, MBARI donated a mill from its machine shop to nearby Monterey High School.

Some sea cucumbers may experience huge population booms following deep-sea “feasts.”

Researchers at MBARI have learned a lot about Monterey Bay using robotic submersibles to look deep below the bay’s surface. Now they can listen to the bay as well, using an ultra-sensitive underwater microphone.

The deep sea is full of strange and little-known worms. A new paper coauthored by MBARI molecular biologist Robert Vrijenhoek describes four newly named species of worms in the genus Xenoturbella that have mouths, but no eyes, brains, stomachs, or anuses.

MBARI research vessel Western Flyer will spend the first few months of 2016 in dry dock while two of its engines are rebuilt as part of their scheduled service.

On Friday, January 15, an event on the floor of Monterey Canyon triggered two sediment transport event detectors. A few days later, a benthic event detector, originally deployed at a depth of 200 meters in the canyon, drifted ashore in Santa Cruz.

MBARI has launched an entirely new version of our website, with expanded access to our data, technology, and research projects.

Underwater avalanches and turbidity currents carry huge amounts of sediment, organic material, and pollutants down submarine canyons and into the deep sea. Yet geologists know very little about how sediment moves during these events.

Submarine canyons are notoriously difficult to study because underwater avalanches periodically surge down the bottoms of many canyons, often burying or destroying scientific instruments.

Submarine canyons are notoriously difficult to study because underwater avalanches periodically surge down the bottoms of many canyons, often burying or destroying scientific instruments. After more than a decade of placing (and sometimes losing) equipment in Monterey Canyon, MBARI researchers have created a unique new tool to study canyon processes.

Last Thursday, MBARI Postdoctoral Fellow Stephanie Bush and her team from the Monterey Bay Aquarium went to sea aboard the R/V Rachel Carson in Monterey Bay. They were on a mission to collect octopuses in the genus Opisthoteuthis to be used for species description and display at the aquarium.

An amazing variety of bristle worms thrive in the ocean, both on the seafloor and up in the water column. Here are some examples of the bizarre and wonderful polychaetes that MBARI researchers have seen in the ocean depths.

For the second year in a row, MBARI has partnered with the Monterey Bay Aquarium, Science Friday, the American Museum of Natural History, and other groups to present a wonderful array of cephalopod images and videos as part of "Cephalopod Week."

In spring 2015, MBARI researchers discovered a large, previously unknown field of hydrothermal vents in the Gulf of California, about 150 kilometers (100 miles) east of La Paz, Mexico.