Hannah Waters with preserved giant squid eye next to her.

Hannah Waters

One of Hannah Waters's earliest memories is digging up sand crabs on a Delaware beach, and she hasn't stopped digging the ocean. Formerly a writer, editor and producer for the Ocean Portal at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, she is currently an associate web editor at Audubon.org. She studied Biology and Latin Minnesota’s Carleton College, sneaking off to the coasts in the summertime to study seabird colonies, conserve endangered piping plovers, and help lobstermen with their traps. She loves cephalopods, imagining plankton as larger-than-life monsters, and weird adaptations.

Contributed Content

World Oceans Day 2012

Chrysaora melanaster is a jellyfish found in the Arctic.

FLIP: The FLoating Instrument Platform

Scripps Institution of Oceanography's FLoating Instrument Platform, or FLIP, conducts sea trials off San Diego in May 2009.

Five Questions for Shirley Pomponi, Medical Sponge Hunter

Many medicines were based on a chemical from the sea sponge Tectitethya crypta.

Shark Teeth Tell Great White Shark Evolution Story

A close-up image of a fossil shark jaw with teeth.

Searching for the Ocean Acidification Signal

A pair of sea butterflies float in the Arctic ocean.

Five Questions with Brigitte Ebbe, Polychaete Pundit

A red and white colored bristle worm swims in the water column.

Zombie Worms Crave Bone

red worms penetrate holes in bone

The Enchanting Sea Monsters on Medieval Maps

A sea monster attacks a wooden ship

Sickly Starfish: A Q&A with Dr. Chris Mah

A decomposing sea star loses its grip on a rock.

Five Questions with Russ Hopcroft, Zooplankton Whiz

This copepod (Gaussia princeps) was collected deeper than 1000 meters in the Sargasso Sea by Census of Marine Zooplankton (CMarZ) researchers in April 2006.

Breaking Down the Myths and Misconceptions About the Gulf Oil Spill

A wildlife biologist surveys oiled algae

Fighting Plastic From Every Angle

Plastic bottles and other marine debris cover a rocky beach in Curacao.

Good-Bye Gillnet, Hello Shark Recovery!

A thresher shark was killed after becoming stuck in a gillnet.

Beyond the Sea: How Oil Spills in the Ocean Affect Birds On Land

With their brown and yellow markings, seaside sparrows (Ammodramus maritimus) blend in well with marshgrass.

How Methane Fueled a Food Web after the Gulf Oil Spill

A view out of the tiny window of the Johnson-Sea-Link submersible.

Up Close and Personal With the Fastest Glacier in the World

The Greenland glacier Jakobshavn Isbrae is massive, at around 40 miles long and more than a mile thick.

Five Things The Gulf Oil Spill Has Taught Us About the Ocean

A wildlife biologist surveys oiled algae

How the Puffin Returned to Eastern Egg Rock

A puffin sits on a rock next to a puffin decoy.

Bringing Back Tampa Bay’s Seagrass

Seagrasses are flowering plants that can form dense underwater meadows and are an important shallow water habitat.

Mangrove Restoration: Letting Mother Nature Do The Work

Mangroves on the edge of the water.

Restauración de manglares: Dejar que la madre naturaleza haga su trabajo

Manglares en el Borde del Mar

Slow Down for Right Whales

North Atlantic right whales and ocean-going vessels often cross paths.

A lesson learned twice: The Story of Scotland’s Marine Protected Areas

King scallop in Lamlash Bay reserve

The Oil Spill, Two Years Later

Mark Dodd, a wildlife biologist from Georgia's Department of Natural Resources, surveying oiled sargassum seaweed in the Gulf of Mexico after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010.

Reef Sharks Repelled by People

Large numbers of grey reef sharks were observed at Jarvis Island, an uninhabited Pacific island, during the 2010 Pacific RAMP expedition of the NOAA Ship Hi'ialakai.

Dancing for the Ocean

Three dancers dependent on one another, as in the food web.

Ray Bradbury and the Sea

A sea monster attacks a ship in an illustration for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.

Happy 50th Birthday, FLIP – a Mobile Research Island

Scripps Institution of Oceanography's FLoating Instrument Platform, or FLIP, conducts sea trials off San Diego in May 2009.

The Great Hermit Crab Migration

A Caribbean hermit crab (Coenobita clypeatus) crawls on the forest floor.

Earth Day, Spawned from the Sea

Satellite view of Earth.

The Whale Graveyard Whodunit

Fossil Whale Digsite at Cerro Ballena, Chile

Charles Darwin's Ocean Upwelling

The Belize Barrier Reef Reserve System consists of the largest barrier reef in the northern hemisphere, offshore atolls, and several hundred sand cays, mangrove forests, coastal lagoons, and estuaries. The system's seven sites illustrate the evolutionary h

#GulfSpillFlashback: Giving the Gulf Oil Spill the Consideration It Deserves

Oil on the water’s surface in the Gulf of Mexico during the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

The Discovery of Two Extreme Sea Stars

Two new species of sea stars were discovered in the deep sea: Paulasterias tyleri (on the left) in a North Pacific hydrothermal vent community, and Paulasterias mcclaini (on the right) in the deep sea off the coast of Antarctica.