Typically associated with the study of Earth’s upper atmosphere and beyond, satellites deployed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) also augment our understanding of Earth’s ecosystems, including critical information about the ocean such as locations of algal blooms and levels of marine photosynthesis.

In 2014, leading coral scientists put out a blunt report: reefs in the Caribbean were in such bad shape they were at risk of vanishing within two decades. And that was before the most recent global coral-bleaching crisis hit the region hard in 2015.

Researchers in Bermuda have released a new study on how corals absorb light in different conditions.

Earlier this year, BIOS senior scientist and coral reef ecologist Eric Hochberg published a paper in the journal Coral Reefs that put numbers to a widely accepted concept in reef science: that materials in seawater (such as phytoplankton, organic matter, or suspended sediment) can affect how much light, as well as the wavelength of light, reaches the seafloor. This, in turn, impacts the ecology of organisms, including corals and algae, that live on the seafloor and rely on that light for photosynthesis.

Upwelling regions account for just 1% of the world’s oceans, yet they are responsible for producing roughly half of the global fishing industry’s annual harvest—worth an estimated $362 billion as of 2016. These nutrient-dense, cool-water regions play a vital role in global ecosystems, supporting the growth of the seaweed and plankton that are the backbone of the marine food web.

In early 2021, Nicole Burt, then 22 years old, was in her fourth year of graduate studies at the University of Southampton in England. She was close to finishing her integrated master’s degree in marine biology and was putting final touches on her thesis, which focused on the effects of dissolved inorganic nutrients, such as nitrogen and phosphorus compounds, on coral growth. Burt hoped to travel after graduation and started making plans to spend the summer conducting fieldwork in a tropical marine environment.

Conducting research can be a career-defining opportunity for an undergraduate student. This experience helps build their CV for graduate school, it can open doors to internships and jobs, and many students present their results at international scientific conferences. Recognizing the increasingly critical role that independent research plays in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers, each fall BIOS welcomes a cohort of undergraduate interns as part of the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program.

A new school dedicated to the study of the ocean and its ecosystems, and it is based in the desert?

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) designed its Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program in 1987 as a way to meaningfully involve undergraduate students in areas of research funded by the federal agency, including astronomy, biological sciences, mathematics, ocean sciences, and others.

In fall 2020, student Aleksandra Crossman spent 12 weeks conducting an internship with BIOS reef systems ecologist Eric Hochberg, supported by a fully-funded scholarship from the Canadian Associates of BIOS (CABIOS). Her project used photomosaics and artificial intelligence to map benthic habitats as part of an environmental assessment carried out for the Bermuda Electric Light Company (BELCO). It proved to be an excellent match and, this winter, Crossman came back to BIOS for a second time for research on coral pigments.