Reef scientist Eric Hochberg is principal investigator in a NASA field campaign that will survey more of the world’s coral reefs than ever before, and in greater detail. Credit Eric Hochberg
Found along the west coast of North America, red sea urchins (Mesocentrotus franciscanus) call the ocean bottoms home. There, these spiky creatures feed on seaweed and kelp, and are often found in groups. While they may face predation from sea stars and crabs, the urchins, when left to their own devices, age phenomenally well. In fact, some researchers even report their lifespans as being over 100 years long.
Climatologist Hans Christian Steen-Larsen joined BIOS in March as an adjunct scientist, to continue and expand his innovative research at the Tudor Hill Marine Atmospheric Observatory. Currently a researcher at the Center for Ice and Climate at the University of Copenhagen, Steen-Larsen has traversed the globe gathering data to reconstruct past climates and to improve current climate models. At BIOS, he uses clues embedded in water molecules to better understand the climactic processes that drive evaporation from the ocean.
The GREAT BARRIER REEF, transposed to North America’s west coast, would stretch from Baja California to British Columbia. “How do you study that big of an area by doing hour-long hikes?,” says Eric Hochberg, a marine biologist at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences. Yet for a long time, scientists studying coral have essentially had to do just that. Since the 1950s, says Hochberg, the state of the art has been a mask and a scuba tank. Scientists studying coral reefs do so an hour at a time, until their air runs out.
When it comes to an organization like BIOS, with over 100 years of history, having anniversaries to celebrate is par for the course. The year 2016 presented such an occasion, with two of our education programs having reached important milestones. The Bermuda Program – our research internship program for Bermudian college students – celebrated its 40th year, epitomizing BIOS’s long-standing commitment to on-island education; while one of our programs for U.S. university students celebrated its 25th anniversary, reflecting BIOS’s international reputation and connectedness to the U.S. ocean sciences community.
Coral reefs have almost always been studied up close, by scientists in the water looking at small portions of larger reefs to gather data and knowledge about the larger ecosystems. But NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is taking a step back and getting a wider view, from about 23,000 ft above.
The cool darkness of the cave provided relief from Bermuda’s spring sun when BIOS scientist Leocadio Blanco-Bercial ducked down and slipped inside, eager to explore the quiet habitat of organisms smaller than sand grains. His cave research, which began in early April, teamed him with researchers from the German Centre for Marine Biodiversity Research to gather water samples from six of Bermuda’s renowned—yet mysterious—limestone caves.
Since the first sighting of a lionfish in Bermuda in 2000, the invasive fish has posed a growing threat to the island’s marine ecosystem. A single female lionfish can produce more than 2 million eggs every year and, with no natural predators, the voracious appetite of lionfish can rapidly reduce numbers of native fish and invertebrates that are commercially, recreationally, and ecologically important.
For millennia, the exchange of CO2 (carbon dioxide) between the ocean and atmosphere has been in balance. Now, with more human-caused, or anthropogenic, carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere, the ocean is taking up more CO2 as well. This additional CO2 is negatively impacting sensitive ecosystems and scientists worry how changes to the ocean environment will affect the way carbon is cycled through the seas. Tune in to Changing Seas The Fate of Carbon, which features BIOS scientists working on the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS), which has collected data on the physical, biological, and chemical properties of the ocean since 1988. Learn how these measurements are helping us learn more about the role of carbon, and the ocean, in Earth’s changing climate.