El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the dominant interseasonal–interannual variability in the tropical Pacific and it exerts significant influence on weather and climate all over the world.

The North Pacific Oscillation (NPO) is the second leading mode of winter sea level pressure anomalies over the North Pacific. It can significantly influence downstream weather

Two-years of data from an array of pressure-sensor equipped inverted echo sounders (PIESs) deployed across the Kuroshio east of Taiwan are analyzed in this study.

Wan-Hsuan Cheng and Chih-hao Hsieh A study on vertical variation of bacteria in the Kuroshio Current east of Taiwan across seasons, led by Ph.D. student Wan-Hsuan Cheng from Academia Sinica

Oceanography professor Dr. Chih-Lin Wei collaborates with a team of Canadian marine biologists to publish a large study, “Seafloor biodiversity of Canada’s three oceans: Patterns, hotspots and potential drivers,” in Diversity and Distributions, a leading journal in the field.

Pei-Chi Ho and Chih-hao Hsieh Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University   A study combining the observations in subtropical aquatic systems and theoretical modeling

The Eady model of baroclinic instability has served as a theoretical foundation for understanding the scale, growth rate, and structure of mid-latitude

Strong ocean current influences a marine seismic survey and forces the streamer off-course from the survey line. The sideway drift of the streamer results in that the reflection data are no longer distributed in common

Estuaries are important habitats for fishes and the understandings of habitat uses of fishes in the estuary can benefit the fishery management and species conservation. Several approaches can be used to study the habitat use of the fish. In this study, we analyze the oxygen isotope compositions (δ18Ootolith) in the [...]

The heat-flow research team of IONTU, established by Prof. Chuen-Tien Shyu, has devoted many years’ effort to develop the frontier, state of the art marine observation system for seafloor

Environmental Science and Pollution Research, in press https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-019-06428-9 Mongolia has been a pristine environment without much pollution. Our objective is to study a section of the Tuul River to evaluate the present condition of this pristine environment. Sediment metal (Al, Fe, Mn, Cu, Zn, Pb, Ni, Cd, Hg, and Cr) [...]

The ocean is a crucial component of the global earth system, which affects the global/regional climate, weather, ecosystems, living resources and biodiversity. The ocean plays a major role in many human activities such as coastal protection, tourism, search and rescue

The underwater glider, a kind of unmanned underwater vehicle, has been used for ocean observations for more than ten years. It was not until 2015 the Ministry of Science

Fan-Sian Lin, Pei-Chi Ho & Chih-hao Hsieh Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University A study in the Kuroshio east of Taiwan led by master student Fan-Sian Lan, Dr. Pei-Chi Ho, Profs. Chih-hao Hsieh and Sen Jan at National Taiwan University, shows that the temporal variation of phytoplankton size spectral slops [...]

Our knowledge of the ability of coral reefs to face contemporary challenges disregards the wide variety of benthic communities (BCs) that could be associated with contrasted dynamics when facing stressors.

With the perspectives of using underwater robots to characterize mesophotic coral ecosystems in Taiwan, we are just back from our first field test of IONTU’s BlueROV2 (Blue Robotics Inc.) at Green Island (Ludao, Taiwan). Despite tough conditions at sea, we smoothly deployed our ROV down to -60 meters while analyzing [...]

Arsenic (As) is an extremely toxic element. But, this element has chemical similarity to that of Phosphorus, which P is an essential nutrient for all organisms. Indeed, arsenic in the ocean can be absorbed by microbes and then transferred to higher trophic

The Pacific North Equatorial Countercurrent (NECC) is a major upper-ocean zonal flow of the wind-driven circulation in the tropical Pacific, flowing eastward across the Pacific Ocean basin between 2°N and 10°N. The NECC transport is about 10-30 Sv eastward out of the warm pool region to the relatively cold eastern [...]

Two functional-improved data buoys, assembled and deployed by a research and technical team at National Taiwan University (NTU), survived from fierce wind and sea state of Super Typhoon Nepartak (Category 5) in the western North Pacific, and successfully recorded crucial air and sea variables within a few kilometers from the [...]

Pei-Ling Wang Microbial in subsurface environments would have exerted a profound impact on the cycling of carbon, nitrogen,

Hsiao-Pei Lu & Chih-hao Hsieh Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University A study in the East China Sea, led by Dr. Hsiao-Pei Lu and Prof. Chih-hao Hsieh, shows for the first time that diversity of marine bacteria community is strongly affected by macro-evolutionary constraints. This study is published (January, 2019) [...]

In Taiwan, the number of reef fish species decrease with latitude because of the changes in environmental conditions around the island. In this study published in January 2019 in Ecology and Evolution, a research team led by Dr. Vianney DENIS from the Institute of Oceanography (National Taiwan University) has investigated [...]

Dr. Lan-Feng Fan and Prof. Saulwood Lin from the Institute of Oceanography, explore authigenic pyrite formation and preservation in the methane dominated Environment.  This study,

Ching-Wei Wang and Chao-Yuan Yang The students exchange activity between IONTU and TUMSAT has been held for four years at both IONTU and TUMSAT. Under this mutual activity, we thank Professors Sen Jan, Yi-Jay Chang, Huei-Ting (Tina) Lin, and Vianney Denis for recommending us to visit TUMSAT in October 2018. [...]

IONTU-AORI bilateral workshop entitled “Northwestern Pacific Ocean Dynamics” was held on Dec 12-13, 2018. A total of 8 scientists (including a Ph.D student and a postdoc) from AORI were invited to IONTU. Accommodating four themes- Physical Oceanography, Marine Geology and Biogeography, Marine Biogeochemistry, and  Marine Biodiversity and Ecology, 14 oral [...]

More than forty isolates of marine, facultatively anaerobic, fermentative bacteria were recovered from sediment samples collected from the lagoon of Dongsha Island, Taiwan, using an anaerobic enrichment culture method. Two of the isolates were selected for characterization and classification in the present study.

Scleractinian corals identification is mainly based on their skeletal characteristics. However, skeletal features can vary

The wake features in the lee of Green Island off southeast of Taiwan are frequently observed by satellite images (Figure 1)

Coral taxonomy typically derives from descriptions of skeletal micro- and macrostructures, however, these characteristics may be altered

Hui-Yu Wang Climate change and anthropogenic effects have caused pronounced changes in physical habitats and biological functions for

Wen-Chien Huang  Jen-Chieh Shiao A study by graduate student Wen-Chien Huang and professors Jen-Chieh Shiao and Te-Yu Liao evaluated the effect of pelagic larval duration of demersal fishes on the population genetic structure

Chen-Yi Tu and Chih-hao Hsieh Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University A study by graduate students Chen-Yi Tu, Kuang-Ting Chen and Professor Chih-hao Hsieh, found that fishing has the most prominent effect

Jinny Yang and Chih-hao Hsieh Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University Understanding the biodiversity effects across trophic levels via predator-prey interactions is

The research project in Japan lead by the scientists in Research Institute for Humanity and Nature, Ryukoku University

Fei-Tsui Reservoir (FTR) and the simulated seasonal variations of depth profile of methane oxidizing bacteria (MOB).

Professor Chih-hao Hsieh from the Institute of Oceanography and Ph.D. student Chun-Wei Chang from Academia Sinica, together with an international research team

Prof. Ming-Huei Chang (in the photo below) reveals the physical processes underlying the Kuroshio meandering and transport variability east of Taiwan using an unprecedented 2-year field observational dataset

Methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere. It traps 28 times more heat per mass unit than carbon dioxide over a 100-year period.

Benthic fauna actively redistributes particles, water, and solutes in the sediment, contributing to the spatial and temporal heterogeneity of oxic, anoxic, and oscillatory redox zones. 

Wenxue Wu and Chih-hao Hsieh Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University Bacterial and protist communities are the two key components in marine microbial food webs. Even though they are both microbes, these two groups can be geographically structured in distinct manners due to their differences in organismal traits. For example, [...]

Mesoscale eddies are everywhere in the ocean. These ocean swirls of either clockwise or counterclockwise spinning with diameter of about 100-300 km

The Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University (IONTU), invites applications for one or two faculty position(s), at the level of assistant professor or higher, starting on August 1, 2018. Applicants should hold a doctoral degree in research fields related to marine sciences, including physical oceanography, chemical oceanography, marine geology & [...]

Late in 2013 the sea became anomalously warm in the Gulf of Alaska. Known as the “warm blob”, these unusual conditions in the eastern North Pacific persisted for two years. At its peak, sea surface temperatures were 2.5 degrees higher than average (3-4 degrees in some specific regions). Down in [...]

Coral morphological groups and their richness have traditionally been used to compare functional compositions of coral assemblages because these groups play an important role in ecosystem processes and coral reef resilience. However, thus far, studies on this topic have remained descriptive and qualitative which are inadequate to describe changes affecting [...]

Arsenic (As) is an environmental toxicant and a major global concern in the world ocean. There are different chemical species for this element (arsenate, arsenite and methylated arsenic) in aquatic environments

Hsiao-Pei Lu and Chih-hao Hsieh Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University   Species is considered as the fundamental unit for ecological studies. Nevertheless, it is notable that living organisms are hierarchically organized: individuals can be classified into species, species into genera, genera into families, and so on. Previous studies on [...]

Aspecies-rich ecological community is composed of few abundant species and a large number of rare species. This universal phenomenon,known as species abundance distribution (SAD), hasintrigued a century of research to understand the underlying mechanism for a general law of community, yet remains controversial.In past, most of studies have treated SAD [...]

In order to quantitatively predict the impact of loss of species number on the provision of ecosystem services therefore human well-being, it is necessary to evaluate the functional redundancy of ecosystem. However, the functional redundancy has been overestimated due to the insufficient appreciation on complexity and multidimentionality of ecosystem functioning. [...]

  Lin Ye and Chih-hao Hsieh Institute of Oceanography, National Taiwan University   With the aid of new technologies to measure zooplankton size and community structure, a group of scientists of National Taiwan University formulated a novel hypothesis: increasing predator size diversity enhances the strength of top-down control on prey [...]

Associate Professor, Chih-hao Hsieh, from the Institute of Oceanography/Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, together with an international research team develops a method that helps examine nonlinear climate impacts on Pacific sardines. This study, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (4/17/2013), provides a new solution to forecast [...]