Articles

An Elegant Tool Called Squidpop That Scientists Want to Crowdsource
06/2016

The device is so easy to use, researchers are asking for a “squidpop blitz” for World Oceans Day.
by Laurie M. Penland

Washed ashore: Art to Save the Sea
05/2016

More than 315 billion pounds of plastic pollute our oceans, including the Great Pacific trash vortex, a vast patch of plastic debris that some estimates calculate as being twice the size of the continental United States.
by Alex di Giovanni

What's So Important About the Bottom of a Cargo Ship? A Smithsonian Dive Team Explains
10/2014

Smithsonian photographer Laurie Penland details the exhausting, but rewarding, work of scraping invasive species off the hull of a boat.
by Laurie M Penland

Face to Face With a Garbage Patch at Sea
05/2011

Laurie Penland has been diving for 19 years, six of them as a diving officer for the Smithsonian Institution, and yet last September she witnessed something she never had before: a plastic invasion.
by Megan Gambino

A Coral Reef's Mass Spawning
12/2009

Understanding how corals reproduce is critical to their survival; Smithsonian's Nancy Knowlton investigates the annual event.
by Megan Gambino