BATS Funding Renewed

A Community of BATS: The Collaborative Engine behind the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study

The Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) is celebrating yet another milestone: renewed funding through August 2028, alongside its companion site, Hydrostation 'S'.

These new awards from the National Science Foundation recognize decades of achievements in ocean science at BATS, and highlight the strong, collaborative research community the team has cultivated since the project began.  

“Collaborations have always been very big at BATS,” said Rod Johnson, associate research professor and an investigator on the project, alongside principal investigator and director of research, Nick Bates. “We are in the order of over 800 peer-reviewed publications for BATS, with over 80% being collaborative efforts. Everything is growing, building on that core research foundation,” said Bates. “And this research collaboration strengthens scientific understanding of this important part of the North Atlantic Ocean.” 
 

As lead investigator, Bates explained, “The core oceanographic research for BATS in the Sargasso Sea of the North Atlantic provides the key scientific framework, collaborations and innovation for many linked U.S. federal agency and foundation-supported projects. BATS, as a nexus of research, amplifies the impact and improves understanding of the ocean and its future. As the saying goes, “the sum is greater than its constituent parts”.

Since 1988, BATS has advanced our understanding of how carbon and associated elements fluctuate over time. The program’s foundation relied heavily on Hydrostation 'S', a deepwater research mooring established in 1954 by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution oceanographer Henry Stommel. Nearly 70 years and more than 1,500 visits later, Hydrostation 'S' remains the longest-running open-ocean time-series, with researchers visiting the site biweekly since its inception.

Both Hydrostation 'S' and BATS are located southeast of Bermuda at the center of the North Atlantic subtropical gyre in the Sargasso Sea, a region characterized by seasonal deep-water mixing and highly stratified summer conditions. These patterns strongly influence carbon cycling and primary productivity, making the site ideal for studying long-term ocean change.

Together, BATS and Hydrostation 'S' have generated the longest continuous dataset of biogeochemical change in the open ocean. This comprehensive record has attracted a diverse array of scientists to the project, inviting collaborative research projects that have both formed the backbone of our research and transformed global understanding of ocean warming, salinification, loss of oxygen and acidification of the ocean across disciplines. 
 

For example, bio-optical sampling, added in 1992, has expanded into a NASA PACE project led by reef ecologist Eric Hochberg. Adding plankton tows to BATS cruises has allowed biologists  Amy Maas and Leo Blanco-Bercial to conduct detailed studies on zooplankton and phytoplankton dynamics. Other collaborative projects, including BIOS-SCOPE and the Center for Chemical Currencies of a Microbial Planet (C-CoMP; ASU BIOS work led by Nick Bates), use BATS data to investigate the microbial and molecular processes shaping the Sargasso Sea.

“All of this research shares a common goal: understanding how carbon changes in the ocean,” said Johnson. “Whether it’s physics, biology, or chemistry, it all comes back to carbon. That’s what makes it so exciting. It lends itself to a deep, interconnected web of numerical modeling.”
 

The collaborative structure of BATS benefits not only senior scientists but also students and early-career researchers. Since the cruises already operate monthly, the team can easily integrate new sampling initiatives without additional expeditions.

“The collaborations at BATS have allowed the program to grow far beyond its beginnings,” said Claire Medley and Rebecca May, research specialists for BATS. “It’s a catalyst for so many projects. As more people engage with the science, more research happens, attracting new participants and strengthening the time-series.”

Over time, BATS has become a proving ground for new paradigms in oceanography. By testing hypotheses in such a well-characterized environment, scientists can contextualize their findings within a robust dataset supported by a team deeply familiar with the site.
 

“Pretty much every discipline of ocean science, we’ve touched upon and measured,” said Johnson. “The location of the BATS is one of the few places in the world, in terms of oceanography, where you have such a diverse set of measurements that you can explore new modeling spaces, parameters, and capabilities.”

With this renewed funding, the team is looking toward the future, planning for more than 130 days at sea aboard R/V Atlantic Explorer, with the goal of reinvigorating past projects and introducing new ancillary scientific pursuits. 

Among these initiatives is a new collaboration with former faculty PIs, Kristen Buck (Oregon State University) and Pete Sedwick (Old Dominion University), plus Ben Twining (Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences), Brandy Toner (University of Minnesota), and Alessandro Tagliabue (University of Liverpool). Together, the group will investigate trace metals and iron cycling in the water column, building on previous Bermuda-based studies led by Sedwick, which introduced a new framework identifying an authigenic colloidal phase responsible for transporting iron from the upper ocean to the deep sea. 
 

The team will conduct detailed seasonal measurements at BATS and lead a process cruise from Bermuda to Cape Verde in May to evaluate how factors such as dissolved organic carbon and dissolved oxygen influence this emerging paradigm and regulate upper-ocean iron inventories.

In an uncertain landscape for science funding, this renewed support underscores the value of the collaborative community that allows long-term time-series to thrive.

“We’re feeling great about this new award, and are more committed than ever to support science,” said Johnson. “We always go out of our way to help people because we want each and every research project to succeed. Especially now, we’re focused on helping those with preliminary ideas or limited funding. Collaboration has been important since day one; it’s what keeps BATS strong.”