The Synergies of Sargassum Seaweed

August 30, 2021

In early August, a team of researchers with the multi-year, multi-institutional BIOS-SCOPE (Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences – Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology) program completed their seventh research cruise aboard the BIOS-operated research vessel Atlantic Explorer. For four days, 13 scientists from eight institutions came together to study the unique microbial communities that develop in the Sargasso Sea during the summer, as well as the dissolved organic matter (DOM) they produce, consume, and redistribute throughout the water column.


Welcoming Three New Instruments for BIOS Research

April 13, 2017

BIOS acquired three new instruments this spring to enrich investigations into the roles and interactions between microbial communities and migrating zooplankton in the Sargasso Sea.


Predators and Puppeteers

September 20, 2017

Scientists estimate there are more than a million times more viruses in the ocean than stars in the universe. While wildly abundant, their tiny sizes present a big a hurdle to fully understanding their function in ocean ecosystems. If a cell were the size of a baseball stadium, a virus would be roughly the size of a baseball, so not only are viruses difficult to see under the microscope, but even gathering enough of their genetic material to analyze can be tricky.


New Insights Bloom from BIOS-SCOPE’s First Year of Data

August 13, 2017

Sampling offshore Bermuda this July, the BIOS-SCOPE (Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences – Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology) program completed its first full year of study to learn how marine microbes produce, transform, and leave behind dissolved organic matter as the seasons progress, and microbial communities wax and wane.


A Special Net for Special Organisms

September 21, 2017

At midnight on a warm night off Bermuda in July, research technician Joe Cope and a small team of crew members prepared to deploy a net system stretching nearly the length of a city bus from the stern of the research vessel Atlantic Explorer. Though it’s not unusual for oceanographers to work around the clock during a research cruise, the timing of this particular cast was important. Every night, under cover of darkness, the marine animals they hoped to capture—some a few inches in length, others the size of a sand grain—come to the surface to feed on phytoplankton, after spending the daylight hours far below the surface, hiding from predators.


Gliders Return to Action

February 20, 2021

After a year of shark attacks, leaking instruments, and a hiatus resulting from the global COVID-19 pandemic, BIOS’s gliders are back to work in the waters offshore Bermuda.


BATS, Big Data, and the Base of the Marine Food Web

November 29, 2021

In mid-November, the BIOS-operated research vessel Atlantic Explorer headed into the Sargasso Sea for the eighth research cruise as part of the multi-year, multi-institutional BIOS-SCOPE (Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences – Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology) project. Since 2015, scientists from Bermuda, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States have converged at BIOS to investigate the microbial ecology of the Sargasso Sea and understand how organic matter (carbon) cycles within the marine environment.


Grant Catalyzes New Study of Ocean Microbes at BIOS

January 01, 2016

St. George’s, Bermuda –– An anonymous donor has awarded BIOS $6 million to support collaborative research on the distinctive microbial communities of the Sargasso Sea over the next five years. The research will leverage ocean measurements and ongoing research at the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) site, bringing new collaborations and technologies to study the ocean’s smallest life forms.


Small but Mighty…and Seasonal!

July 29, 2020

Earlier this year, BIOS associate scientist and zooplankton ecologist Leocadio Blanco-Bercial published a paper in the scientific journal Frontiers in Marine Science that sheds light on zooplankton communities in the Sargasso Sea, where zooplankton diversity is among the highest in the world’s ocean.


Don’t Let Their Size Fool You

November 25, 2019

For nearly a hundred years, scientists have known that plankton—the microscopic organisms that drift and float in the ocean, also known as marine microbes—form the basis of the ocean’s food web. Phytoplankton (literally “plant wanderers”) are photosynthetic, like their terrestrial counterparts, and convert sunlight into energy. Phytoplankton, in turn, are consumed by zooplankton (literally “animal wanderers”), as well as a host of larger marine organisms, including juvenile fish, shellfish, birds, and even whales. However, scientists are now learning that plankton play an even larger role in earth’s complex biogeochemical systems.


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