OOI Participates in Woods Hole Science Stroll
The Woods Hole Science Stroll is an annual event that highlights the major research institutions located in Woods Hole village (WHOI, MBL, NOAA, USGS, USCG), and also includes over 20 organizations representing a breadth of STEM research, education, and environmental groups (Fig 1). The all-day event is open to the public and includes exhibits and hands-on demonstrations for visitors to learn about marine science directly from working scientists, engineers, and technicians. Exhibits range from explanations of ocean science and environmental stewardship to demonstrations of underwater robots and aerial drones.
The OOI team participated in the 2026 Science Stroll, which took place on August 8th and hosted over 2,500 visitors. The Stroll is an effective form of public outreach, allowing OOI engineers and technicians to explain the project’s science goals and observing technology directly to visitors. OOI team members participated in planning, preparation, and staffing of the event and prepared two exhibits.
The first exhibit showed examples of OOI instrumentation, including a CTD, fluorometer, and nitrate sensor (Fig. 2). In addition to seeing the size, shape, and sensing mechanisms of real instruments, the exhibit also had several of the same instruments that had been damaged, either by impacts during deployment and recovery or by falling to the seafloor and being crushed by pressure.
The second exhibit presented OOIs Remotely Operated Vehicle. The ROV is used for visual inspection of mooring components after deployment and assessment or recovery of assets that cannot be retrieved by other means. Seeing an ROV up close gives visitors a sense of its size, weight, and layout and leads to many questions. Examples include why there are four thrusters, how weight and buoyancy are balanced, and why the camera has to be pointed towards the manipulator.
The OOI exhibits were adjacent to WHOI’s mooring and rigging shop display, allowing discussions of mooring materials to be demonstrated with samples of synthetic line, shackles, wire rope, and other components. The rigging shop display included a 64-inch syntactic foam flotation sphere used for subsurface moorings.
To one side of the OOI exhibit tables was an OOI Coastal Profiler Mooring buoy, demonstrating the size and scale of what can be seen from a ship in the vicinity of an OOI array. On the other side was a foam flotation sphere that exceeded its depth rating and was destroyed by high pressure (Fig. 3). The crushed sphere is a crowd favorite, which visitors are free to touch and inspect up close.
With thousands of potential interactions between scientists and members of the public, the Science Stroll offers a unique venue for telling the OOI story in the context of the world-class ocean science being conducted in Woods Hole village.
Figure 1. Crowds gather along the dock during the Woods Hole Science Stroll. Credit: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Figure 2. The OOI booth at the 2026 Woods Hole Science Stroll. Credit: Nikki Arm, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.
Figure 3. A foam flotation sphere on display at the 2026 Woods Hole Science Stroll. Credit: Kylene Cooley, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.