A unique fundraising program, the Bermuda Championship Birdies for Charity program, was launched earlier this summer benefitting charities on the island of Bermuda. The program will provide up to a 10% match on every donation, with all funds raised going directly to the organizations involved.

BIOS was well-represented this month at the first Bermuda Climate Summit, which began with a reception and dinner the evening of May 24 and continued with a conference the following day. The inaugural event was designed to “bring together leaders from business, science, and public policy sectors to explore solutions and opportunities” to address climate risk protection, according to the summit’s agenda.

Fishackathon 2016 took place on Earth Day weekend (April 22 to 24) in 42 locations around the world, including, for the first time, Bermuda. The event brought together computer programmers to find creative ways to collect and analyze data for solutions to fisheries and marine issues.

Twenty-eight teams from nine schools and educational organizations will converge on the National Sports Centre on Saturday, April 30, for the 2016 MATE Bermuda Regional ROV Challenge. The program, hosted by BIOS, is part of the Mid Atlantic Robotics IN Education Program (MARINE), with lead donor support from HSBC.

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.

The 13th annual International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS) convened in Honolulu, Hawaii in June with more than 2,500 scientists, policy makers and managers in attendance from 70 countries. The conference theme ‘bridging science to policy’ provided students and professionals with the opportunity to communicate their recent findings and ongoing research programs to an audience with the shared goal of improving coral reef conservation through the application of science. BIOS associate scientist Eric Hochberg co-chaired a session on remote sensing of coral reefs, during which he gave a presentation about the NASA-funded COral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL) mission (of which he is the Principal Investigator). This symposium also saw three BIOS alums from the NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. Michael Wooster, Naomi Huntley and Mia Thomas (pictured) presented their research in both oral presentations and poster sessions, demonstrating the positive impact this program has on the careers of young scientists.

A record 150 permitted lionfish cullers competed in the 6th annual Groundswell Lionfish Tournament, a day-long contest to capture invasive lionfish on Bermuda’s reefs. After cullers landed their catch, the fish were given to attending scientists who weighed and collected samples of stomach contents and gonads, as well as fin clips for genetic analyses. These samples will be studied by scientists in Bermuda and other areas threatened by lionfish invasions to further a global understanding of lionfish ecology, physiology, reproduction, and distribution.

Volunteers from BIOS spent a day scouring beaches, snorkeling in shallow waters, and diving with tanks to remove marine debris, as well as to document the types and quantities of materials collected, during an annual, island-wide clean up effort in September. Eight BIOS employees and students were involved in an on-water operation to retrieve underwater debris on Frank’s Bay in Southampton.

In 2019, BIOS joined efforts with the Government of Bermuda and the Waitt Institute to form the Bermuda Ocean Prosperity Programme (BOPP). This innovative partnership was designed to leverage the partners’ various planning, legal, advocacy, strategy, and scientific expertise to protect 50,000 square miles (90,000 square kilometers) within Bermuda’s marine protected areas to preserve marine biodiversity and ensure economic resilience for the island’s ocean economy.

This summer, there is a new addition to BIOS: a 20-foot (6 meter) x 4-foot (1.2 meter) above-ground pool, dubbed the Underwater Robotics Innovation Test Pool. The pool is serving as a testing facility this summer for underwater robots, also known as remotely operated vehicles (or ROVs), as part of BIOS’s Mid-Atlantic Robotics IN Education (MARINE) program which is sponsored by RenaissanceRe.