Messaging and elevator pitch toolkit
To help members of our community communicate more effectively with diverse audiences, we have developed a WHOI messaging toolkit. WHOI board and corporation members, leadership, staff, students, and others can use the toolkit to develop individualized messaging, and an “elevator pitch”—a memorable description of an organization, mission, or concept that can be easily understood in a short period of time. Your elevator pitch could describe WHOI and its mission, an area of WHOI research, or a specific WHOI initiative or project. We have provided a sample elevator pitch along with messages and facts you can use to personalize your pitch.
Sample WHOI elevator pitch
The ocean is our planet’s life support system. It is one of our most critical natural resources, but it is also under threat. The ocean’s incredible complexity, size, and remoteness make it difficult to study, leaving policy makers, consumers, and conservation groups in doubt about how to ensure a sustainable future. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is the world’s leading independent organization dedicated specifically to ocean exploration, research, education, and awareness. For more than 90 years, we’ve been at the forefront of groundbreaking science and technology development, unlocking the mysteries of the ocean and its connections to human lives and livelihoods. Today, our researchers are leading more than 800 concurrent projects around the globe, tackling some of the most challenging and important problems of our time, from climate change to plastic waste to sustainable food and energy production. This is an exceptionally exciting time for ocean research. Can we sit down sometime soon to talk about what matters most to you, and how you can get involved?
Elements of an elevator pitch
The above example includes the following key ingredients of a successful elevator pitch (but we encourage you to develop your own!):
Hook:
The ocean is our planet’s life support system.
Problem statement:
It is one of our most critical natural resources, but it is under threat. The ocean’s incredible complexity, size, and remoteness make it difficult to study, leaving policy makers, consumers, and conservation groups in doubt about how to ensure a sustainable future.
Who we are:
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is the world’s leading independent organization dedicated specifically to ocean exploration, research, education, and awareness. For more than 90 years, we’ve been at the forefront of groundbreaking science and technology development, unlocking the mysteries of the ocean and its connections to human lives and livelihoods.
How we are addressing the problem:
Today, our researchers are leading more than 800 concurrent projects around the globe, tackling some of the most challenging and important problems of our time, from climate change to plastic waste to sustainable food and energy production.
Call to action:
Can we sit down sometime soon to talk about what matters most to you, and how you can get involved?
Messages you can infuse into your own personal elevator pitch and other communications.
Why the ocean?
- Water covers 71 percent of the Earth’s surface, and the ocean holds more than 96 percent of the water on our planet.
- The ocean functions as the life support system of our planet and acts as the key regulator of our climate and weather.
- The ocean is the main driver of the planetary water cycle, which drives rainfall, snow, and droughts.
- Photosynthesis in the ocean created our oxygen atmosphere and continues to provide much of the planet’s oxygen.
- The ocean is among the greatest repositories of biodiversity and life on the planet.
- About 40 percent of the U.S. population—127 million people—live in coastal counties.
- About one tenth of the world’s population lives on land less than roughly 30 feet (10 meters) above sea level.
- More than 3.3 billion people depend on the ocean as a key source of protein.
- The annual contribution of ocean-based businesses and activities to the global economy is estimated at between $3 and $6 trillion per year. In the U.S., the value of the Blue Economy is estimated at $373 billion.
- Around 80 per cent of global trade by volume and over 70 per cent of global trade by value are carried by ships.
- Climate change, sea level rise, and other environmental risks connected to the ocean are widely recognized national security issues within the military.
- Advances in underwater robotics, acoustics, non-human-occupied vehicles, microsensors, and other undersea technologies have major implications for naval intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, and the U.S. Navy is significant funder of academic ocean science and technology development
- The U.S. Navy has a longstanding relationship with WHOI and other leading oceanographic institutions, which provide critical insights into oceanographic processes that have great significance for naval operations, and develop ocean technologies with both scientific and military applications.
- Globally, aquaculture already supplies more than half of all seafood consumed by humans, a proportion that continues to rise as the world population grows.
- In the future, our homes and vehicles could be powered by fuel made from seaweed grown at large-scale offshore farms.
- In addition, future offshore wind development in state and federal coastal waters and the Great Lakes have the potential to supply 2,000 gigawatts of power to U.S. consumers — approximately two times the combined generating capacity of all U.S. electric power plants.
- Through its food webs and chemical reactions, the ocean helps to regulate Earth's climate by taking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and moving a fraction of that carbon through the ocean twilight zone to the deep ocean, where it can remain sequestered out of the atmosphere for hundreds or even thousands of years.
- Biological processes in the ocean twilight zone sequester between 2 and 6 billion metric tons of carbon annually—at least double and perhaps as much as six times the amount of carbon emitted by all automobiles worldwide. In economic terms, this process has an estimated value of between $300 and $900 billion annually. Without it, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could be as much as 200 ppm higher than they are today.
- Ocean waters have absorbed most of human-caused global warming, and just under a third of the carbon produced by human activities.
- The salinity of surface water in one part of the ocean has been linked to rainfall patterns on land thousands of miles away.
- Surface water temperature can help predict the intensity of storms—something scientists have learned by launching temperature probes from military aircraft into the path of hurricanes.
- A warming global climate is affecting the ocean in significant ways, through shifts in major currents, sea level rise, and changes in water temperature, pH, salinity, and productivity.
- The ocean preserves records of past changes in climate and weather—in its sediments, in coral skeletons, and even in whaling logbooks—just as present-day commercial fishing communities bear witness to ocean warming and its impacts on fisheries.
- Nowhere are the impacts of climate change as evident as they are at the poles. Melting glaciers and sea ice, warming waters, ocean acidification, shifting global currents, and rising sea levels—these changes and more are unfolding in the Arctic and Southern Oceans at an unprecedented pace, putting wildlife and humans at risk.
- There is an underwater America—in fact, about 50 percent of U.S. territory lies under the ocean.
- Since the discovery of hydrothermal vents in 1977, scientists have found more than 800 animal species in vent ecosystems.
- The average depth of the global ocean is more than 12,000 feet.
- To date, less than 20 percent of the seafloor has been surveyed in high resolution.
- The world’s longest mountain range is almost entirely underwater.
- Ninety percent of the Earth’s volcanic activity occurs in the ocean.
- Life may have started in the early ocean. The oceans of other worlds, such as those on the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, may be the places we first find evidence of extraterrestrial life.
- We still have identified only a small fraction of the marine species in our oceans.
Why now?
- Climate change: As the atmosphere warms, the ocean warms with it. In turn, warmer surface waters increase storm intensity, change global ocean currents, and result in dramatic impacts on ocean life, from driving commercially important species northward to bleaching and killing corals on a massive scale. A recent economic risk analysis estimated total U.S. climate-related losses at 1-2% GDP annually by 2050, or an average additional cost of $180-360 billion. For context, this approaches one-half of what we spend on national defense each year.
- Ocean acidification: The ocean absorbs just under a third of the excess carbon dioxide produced by human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels, cement production, and deforestation. This dissolved CO2 lowers the pH of ocean water, reducing the ability of shellfish and corals to build their calcium carbonate skeletons.
- Overfishing: In 2018, the amount of fish captured worldwide reached more than 106 million tons—the highest level ever recorded—driven mostly by marine capture fisheries. This level of fishing pressure has come at a cost: more than half of fish stocks are at the limit of their sustainable fishing capacity, and just over a third are already overfished and unsustainable. In addition, more than a third of global fisheries production (including capture fisheries and aquaculture) is either lost or wasted each year.
- Pollution: Land-based sources of marine pollution—such as industrial chemicals, agricultural run-off, sewage, and plastic waste—account for approximately 80 percent of marine pollution worldwide, posing a threat to both marine life and human health. Other sources of marine pollution include oil spills, ship traffic, and air pollution.
- Persistent organic pollutants such as mercury, DDT, and newer industrial pollutants such as flame retardants and and coolants have been detected all over the global ocean, from coastlines to more than a mile beneath the ocean surface. These chemicals bioaccumulate in fish and other ocean animals, posing a potential but declining risk to marine life and human health from seafood consumption.
- Pesticides, fertilizer, and pharmaceuticals from agricultural run-off, residential lawns, and untreated sewage also pose a risk to ocean life. Nitrogen pollution (from fertilizer, animal, and human waste) can cause massive algal blooms. When these die off, large areas of low or no oxygen can form, known as “dead zones” due to their inability to support most ocean life.
- At least 5 million tons of plastic enter the oceans every year.. Only about 1 percent of this plastic can be accounted for. Where the rest ends up is not well understood but likely consists of microplastics—tiny fragments less than a fifth of an inch in size.
- Seabed drilling and mining: The prospecting, extraction, and ocean transport of oil and natural gas from under the seafloor can damage sensitive ocean habitats and marine life. Interest in deep-sea mining is also increasing, as demand for metals for high-tech applications such as smartphones and electric storage batteries increases and land-based deposits run out.
- Ocean noise: Underwater noise from ship traffic, oil and gas exploration, and other sources can stress marine animals and interfere with their communication and other behaviors. Navy sonar has been implicated in the mass stranding of whales and other marine mammals.
- Species loss: The outcome of these threats to ocean ecosystems is the loss of critical habitats, compromised food webs, and the extinction and near-extinction of marine species—some likely disappearing before we even have a chance to discover them. Coral reefs—which have the highest biodiversity of any ecosystem on Earth and directly support over 500 million people—are particularly vulnerable to bleaching and die offs in a warming ocean. Meanwhile, entanglement in fishing lines and ship strikes have driven the North Atlantic right whale to the brink of extinction: Fewer than 400 of these majestic animals remain.
- As the surface ocean warms, the risks to coastal communities are increasing. Threats include sea level rise, hurricanes, severe storms, and other natural disasters linked to ocean systems.
- Changes to the ocean may have increasingly chaotic, unpredictable results.
- Resource-poor and less resilient societies, particularly small island nations, face especially high risks.
- Many changes that affect humans are already apparent, such as the collapse of major fisheries, threats to marine food webs, the spread of invasive species, reductions of Arctic sea ice and an accompanying rise in sea levels, the discovery of persistent pollutants throughout the ocean, and the increasing frequency and geographic spread of “red tides” and other harmful algal blooms.
- The ocean is one of the last unexplored frontiers on Earth. Only about 20 percent of the seafloor has been mapped in detail—far less than the moon or Mars.
- It is inherently difficult to study the ocean, and doing so requires specialized skills and technologies. Few organizations are equipped to carry out oceanographic research, and limited federal, corporate, or private funding is invested in these activities in the U.S.
- There is an urgent need to understand fundamental ocean processes to predict future impacts on the ocean and to develop informed policies to sustain it.
- To improve predictive modeling and understanding of the physical, chemical, and biological processes that govern our planet, we must overcome the inherent difficulties of studying the marine environment. This will require investment in technology development to enable an “always on, always connected” ocean, analogous to existing technologies, systems, and networks for weather monitoring and forecasting.
- We have discovered “super reefs” that can resist and recover from warming and bleaching events.
- We are driving the development of new technologies at a rapid pace, opening doors to new discoveries.
- Partnerships between oceanographers, governing bodies, regulatory agencies, advocacy organizations, and the fishing industry provide models for successful ocean stewardship.
- Ocean research—for example, the study of heat- and pressure-resistant organisms—is unlocking the potential for new medical breakthroughs.
- Research shows that ocean ecosystems are remarkably resilient and that life can return when marine areas are protected.
- Public awareness of the importance of the ocean and what threatens it is growing around the globe.
Why support WHOI
- WHOI researchers are working across disciplines on roughly 800 concurrent projects to provide critical information about some of the most urgent and fascinating questions of our time.
- For more than 90 years, WHOI has been pushing the boundaries of knowledge about our ocean and its relationship with the rest of our planet.
- WHOI is a leader in critical discovery science, technology development, and ocean communications (see Historical Highlights, below).
- WHOI scientists and engineers study many key areas of research directly related to human society and sustaining life on Earth:
- Climate change: sea level rise, extreme weather, fisheries impacts, glacial melt, ocean acidification, coral bleaching and disease.
- Pollution: microplastics, oil spills, industrial chemicals, and oxygen depletion.
- Food security: aquaculture and sustainable fisheries.
- Energy: biofuels and off-shore wind.
- The ocean twilight zone: climate regulation (through carbon transport) and marine food webs.
- The Blue Economy: fisheries, aquaculture, and wind energy.
- Natural disasters: hurricanes and severe storms, earthquakes, and tsunamis.
- Threatened marine life: coral reefs, right whales, Emperor penguins.
- Human-animal interactions: seals, sharks, and jellyfish.
- WHOI researchers have forged collaborations with other top scientists and engineers at institutions throughout the U.S. and across the globe, accelerating ocean discovery and innovation.
- WHOI research findings and technology innovations reach outside of academia, where they are used to inform policy and address some of the most urgent issues facing society today, such as climate change, sustainable food and energy production, and national security.
- WHOI is developing and launching new technologies and observing systems to create a “networked ocean” that will:
- Enable around-the-clock, real-time data collection that speeds up the pace of science and increases its geographic scope.
- Allow us to more effectively manage our ocean and its resources.
- Improve models and forecasting of ocean-related weather events, such as hurricanes, severe weather, floods, and droughts.
- Predict other, potentially harmful or dangerous phenomena such as harmful algal blooms, tsunamis, and marine heatwaves.
- Science is a systematic way of studying and understanding the world using observations, data-gathering, and experiments to rigorously test hypotheses and reach testable, repeatable conclusions.
- Science is all around us: in what we eat and drink, in how we power our homes and businesses, in the structures of our buildings, in our modes of communication, and in how we travel from place to place. It is in how we give birth, and how we die, and in every moment in between.
- Science has been among the most important drivers of progress in recent human history, and many of the most important scientific discoveries and technological developments have come out of fundamental scientific research.
- Effective, sustainable public policy-making relies on rigorous, impartial science.
- Science is necessary to enable better decision-making by consumers and more effective action by conservation groups.
- U.S. leadership in science has played a critical role in U.S. competitiveness and national security over the past several decades, but our leadership is not assured and continued investment is essential.
- Businesses and investors need scientific insight to understand environmental risks and adapt accordingly.
- As a leader in ocean science and engineering, WHOI has a clear role to play in advocating for evidence-based decision-making that sustains the ocean and its ecosystems, processes, and resources.
- WHOI is a community of many of the world’s foremost independent scientists and engineers, working together across disciplines to explore and understand the ocean.
- Our researchers are known and respected for the quality and objectivity of their scientific work, and WHOI attracts visiting scholars, and collaborators who are leaders in their fields.
- We routinely push the boundaries of oceanographic science and technology, effectively shaping and leading the field of oceanographic discovery.
- WHOI attracts flexible thinkers and creative problem solvers who are good at devising ways to investigate the unknown. The enthusiasm, dedication and ambition of our staff fuels new discovery. Our scientists have proven entrepreneurial skills and a long and successful history of partnering with researchers across academia, government, industry, and nonprofits.
- We have a deep sense of responsibility to learn about the ocean for the benefit of society and a proven ability to apply expertise in times of crisis.
- Marine operations and a fleet of 100 vehicles and vessels—including two large research ships—offer scientists and engineers incredible access to the sea.
- Proven ability to take on ambitious large-scale, long-term projects such as the Ocean Observatories Initiative and the Ocean Twilight Zone project
- Cutting-edge laboratories
- A deep-water dock facility
- Several national facilities, such as the National Deep Submergence Facility and the National Ocean Sciences Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (NOSAMS). Machine and fabrication shops, and innovation facilities such as Dunkworks.
- Hands-on approach to working on and in the ocean—“The WHOI way”
- Well known among federal agencies, private funders, and industry leaders as the go-to place to understand and access the ocean.
- Our graduate education program is an integral part of the fabric and culture of the Institution, and the basis of a more than 50-year partnership with MIT.
- Alumni from the prestigious MIT-WHOI Joint Program comprise a large segment of all ocean scientists in the U.S.; many also go on to leadership positions in government, non-profits, the military, education, and outreach.
- Students work directly with scientists and engineers from day one in labs and in the field.
- Students and postdocs are treated as peers and have a high rate of first-authored, peer-reviewed publications. This collaborative atmosphere provides high level training to students and spurs existing scientists to continuously learn and improve.
- Undergraduate students who participate in WHOI’s summer program contribute substantially to summer research projects and benefit from mentoring aimed to foster a new generation of oceanographers.
- WHOI’s postdoctoral program is one of the most respected in the country.
- Located in Woods Hole, Mass., WHOI has over 1,000 employees and is the largest employer on the Cape after Cape Cod Healthcare.
- We rank fifth among all academic institutions in Massachusetts for capturing federal research dollars, with the top four being large universities including Harvard and MIT.
- Nationally, our researchers win one in every three dollars of National Science Foundation funding for ocean research.
- We are instrumental in the Blue Economy, directly and indirectly creating almost 3,900 jobs and $604 million dollars in business revenue, right here in Massachusetts.
- WHOI’s bond rating and charity navigator score signal the financial health of the organization.
- New lines of business and technology spin-offs show WHOI’s viability in the technology marketplace
- WHOI shares its findings and discoveries with policymakers and the public, informing sustainable decision-making and increasing ocean literacy.
- WHOI is committed to academic engagement, and our students and researchers publish and communicate results in peer-reviewed journals, posters, and presentations.
- Members of the WHOI community serve on various external panels, committees, and working groups, and provide testimony and briefings to elected officials and policymakers.
- WHOI invests in broader communications and outreach efforts, including our website, social media, Oceanus magazine, and media relations.
Featured projects
- In 2018, WHOI launched an audacious program to explore, understand, and raise awareness of the ocean twilight zone—a vast but little known region of the ocean 650 to 3,300 feet (200 to 1,000 meters) below the surface.
- This is the largest philanthropically supported program in the Institution’s history.
- The twilight zone is a fundamental part of the ocean ecosystem, playing an important role in carbon sequestration and marine food webs, as well as the natural functions of many processes throughout the ocean.
- With industrial interests now moving to exploit twilight zone resources, we are in race against time, working to ensure that understanding outpaces exploitation before this critical ecosystem is irrevocably altered by human activities.
- Biological processes in the twilight zone are responsible for sequestering 2 to 6 billion metric tons of carbon annually—at least double and perhaps as much as six times the amount of carbon emitted by all automobiles worldwide—which has an estimated value of $300 to $900 billion annually.
- Without this service, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could be as much as 200 ppm higher than they are today, and the value of such a loss in sequestration service could amount to between $170 billion and $3 trillion in mitigation costs and $23 to $401 billion in adaptation costs by the end of the century.
- Reducing uncertainty in estimates of the amount of carbon sequestered in the ocean could have an economic value on the order of hundreds of billions of dollars, leading to improved decision making and policy formation.
- Twilight zone organisms support economically important fisheries worldwide and are increasingly seen as a source of protein to supply aquaculture operations, which are expected to grow by 37 percent from 2016 to 2030.
- Greater understanding of the twilight zone provides other benefits to society in the form of research activity, knowledge creation, and aesthetic value that should not be overlooked.
- In 2018, The National Science Foundation (NSF) selected WHOI to lead a coalition of academic and oceanographic research organizations on a five-year, $220 million contract to operate and maintain the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI). Other coalition members include the University of Washington (UW), Oregon State University (OSU), and Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey.
- The OOI is an advanced system of integrated, scientific platforms and sensors that measure physical, chemical, geological, and biological properties and processes from the seafloor to the sea surface in key coastal and open-ocean sites of the Atlantic and Pacific. All OOI data are freely available online to scientists and the general public.
- The OOI officially launched in 2009, when NSF and the Consortium for Ocean Leadership (COL) signed a cooperative agreement to support the construction and initial operation of OOI’s cabled, coastal, and global arrays.
- The launch represented the culmination of work begun decades earlier, when ocean scientists in the 1980s envisioned a collection of outposts in the ocean that would gather data around the clock, in real- and near-real time for years on-end and enhance the scientific community’s ability to observe complex oceanographic processes that occur and evolve over time scales ranging from seconds to decades and spatial scales ranging from inches to miles.
- The facility was designed to address critical questions about the Earth-ocean system, including climate change, ecosystem variability, ocean acidification, plate-scale seismicity and submarine volcanoes, and carbon cycling with the goal of better understanding the ocean and our planet.
- WHOI scientists and engineers have led the development, building, testing, and first deployment of many of the key technologies that make these arrays possible.
- WHOI’s Ocean Worlds initiative is exploring one of humanity’s most fundamental questions: Are we alone in the universe?
- Ocean worlds are a group of planetary bodies in our outer solar system known to have vast liquid water oceans deep below thick crusts of ice.
- Many of them also have rocky seafloors like we have on Earth, raising the possibility that they could support chemosynthetic life similar to what we find at hydrothermal vents, cold seeps, and other forms of seafloor fluid flow on Earth—both known and yet to be discovered.
- In partnership with NASA, WHOI scientists and engineers are applying their expertise in the exploration and study of the deep ocean to modeling planetary systems and to building sensors that will help inform the search for life on ocean worlds beyond Earth.
- In a related project, known as HADEX, WHOI has developed a new autonomous class of underwater vehicles capable of diving into the ocean’s Hadal Zone—the deepest trenches on Earth, more than 20,000 feet below sea level.
Historical highlights
- Founded in 1930, WHOI began with a dozen scientists, a single laboratory building, and a small wooden research vessel: the 142-foot ketch Atlantis, whose profile still appears on the Institution’s historic seal.
- 1964: The human occupied submersible Alvin was commissioned on June 5 in Woods Hole on the WHOI dock. Alvin’s first pilot was William Rainnie, who took the sub on a test dive in Woods Hole Harbor on June 26.
- 1966: The U.S. Navy called in Alvin to help find and recover a hydrogen bomb that was accidentally dropped into the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Spain.
- 1977: Discovery of hydrothermal vents: A WHOI team led by marine geologist Robert Ballard found the first-known active hydrothermal vent on the seafloor of the Galápagos Rift, shattering the long-held notion that life could not exist on the ocean bottom.
- 1985: Discovery of the Titanic: After many unsuccessful attempts by other groups, a team from WHOI discovered the wreck of the RMS Titanic.
- 2010: The Deepwater Horizon oil spill: An explosion at the Deepwater Horizon drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico killed 11 workers and unleashed the largest accidental marine oil spill in history. WHOI administrators and investigators were among those called by oil and gas company BP and the federal government for advice and assistance to monitor the spill and assess its impacts on fragile Gulf ecosystems.
- 2011: Air France Flight 447: In 2011, a search team led by WHOI located the wreckage of Air France Flight 447 nearly 2.5 miles below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, helping French investigators answer questions related to the cause of the crash and help avoid a similar disaster in the future.
- 2011: Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear accident: A 9.0-magnitude earthquake in the Pacific Ocean 80 miles off the coast of Japan triggered a series of tsunamis that damaged the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, resulting in the largest accidental release of radiation to the ocean in history. Within months of the accident, WHOI marine chemist Ken Buesseler assembled a research cruise and went to Japan to sample ocean water around the plant, detecting unhealthy levels of Cesium in plankton and fish. Buesseler continues to be a go-to expert on marine radiochemistry related to Fukushima and other natural and human sources of radioactivity.
- 2014: Alvin celebrated the 50th anniversary of its commission.
- 2016: At the request of the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), WHOI assisted in locating the Video Data Recorder of the sunken cargo ship El Faro.
- 2017: The National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded WHOI a $5.6 million grant over five years to support a new Long-Term Ecological Research (LTER) site along the Northeast U.S. continental shelf, led by senior scientist Heidi Sosik.
- 2018: WHOI launched a philanthropically-funded $35 million effort to explore, understand, and raise awareness of the ocean twilight zone.
- 2019: The National Science Foundation selected WHOI to lead the Ocean Observatories Initiative, a science-driven ocean observing network that delivers real-time data from more than 800 instruments to address critical science questions regarding the world’s oceans.
- 2019: The MIT-WHOI Joint Program celebrated its 50th anniversary and its 1,000th Ph.D. graduate.
- 2020: WHOI celebrated its 90th birthday.