Welcome to Wavechasers!  You know the 20'-30' waves we see and surf on beaches like Pipeline and Jaws? Piddling! The waves we study are beneath the sea surface, 1000's of meters down, and can be as large as 300 m (1000') high (think: underwater waves as large as skyscrapers). More interesting still, they travel all the way across oceans, and eventually break just like surface waves do. Things get really interesting (and get us money to study them) when we note that these waves can cause submarines to hit the bottom or breach the surface, and the heat moved around by the breaking has profound implications for the oceans' circulation - which in turn impacts the climate. So we build instruments in our lab to monitor and better understand their propagation and breaking, spend about 1-2 months a year traveling all over the world deploying the systems and trying to understand the data.

Check out our blog archive to get a feel for the kinds of things we do.


Pacific  white-sided dolphins off the Oregon coast.  
  


What's New?
  • Very strong nonlinear internal waves discovered on Washington coast The Cha Ba/NEMO mooring allowed the first-ever characterization of the high-frequency internal wave field off our coast.  Though many past studies have examined the low-frequency flows ...
    Posted Mar 21, 2012 4:47 PM by WaveChasers APL
  • John Mickett nominated for the UW Distinguished Staff Award Congratulations John!  This is the highest honor UW bestows upon its staff.  You SO deserve it!!!See the list of the other nominees -  http://www.washington.edu/admin/hr/dsa ...
    Posted Feb 16, 2012 5:44 PM by Matthew Alford
  • HOT deployment cruise rescued by US Coast Guard The Wavechasers team was preparing to deploy the HOT mooring 60 miles north of Oahu, Hawaii, when the R/V Kilo Moana developed a baseball-sized hole in the hull ...
    Posted Jan 9, 2012 8:30 AM by Matthew Alford
  • A new wavechaser Gunnar Voet has accepted our postdoc offer and will be joining us in March to work on the Samoan Passage project.  Welcome Gunnar!
    Posted Nov 25, 2011 11:38 AM by Matthew Alford
  • Aegean Sea and PAPA papers accepted After languishing on a Journal of Marine Sciences editor's desk for months, the Aegean paper was resubmitted to JGR in August and was just accepted.The PAPA paper was ...
    Posted Nov 25, 2011 11:37 AM by Matthew Alford
Showing posts 1 - 5 of 23. View more »
Upcoming Events

NEMO Deployment Cruise  5/24-5/26, 2012
 		 R/V Thompson
HOT Deployment Cruise
 		 7/1-7/7, 2012  R/V Kilo Moana
Samoan Passage Pathways Cruise
 		 July 19-Aug 29, 2012
 		 R/V Revelle


In the News
  • HOT deployment cruise rescued by US Coast Guard See the announcement.  This was the top story at Honolulu's KHON.Check out the original story at KHON, CNN and ABC.
    Posted Jan 9, 2012 8:38 AM by Matthew Alford
  • Crushing Gummi Bears We had hoped that developing a "crush cam" would provide a point of interest for sharing our research with non-scientists----but we were still stunned by the interest. Here ...
    Posted Dec 14, 2011 1:47 PM by WaveChasers APL
Showing posts 1 - 2 of 2. View more »