Mark your calendars to join the Bermuda Ocean Prosperity Programme (BOPP) on Thursday, December 9th at 6pm AST for the second installment of its free virtual public webinar series, B.E.A.C.H.—the BOPP Environmental Awareness Chat Hour. This series is designed to share with the broader island community a variety of topics related to BOPP, including perspectives from diverse ocean users; science-based and public processes that help BOPP balance the needs of human uses and the natural environment; and local research being conducted in coastal and offshore ecosystems.

BIOS scientists gained a fresh perspective on six-month-old mustard coral larvae (shown in photo above) and tiny lionfish eggs (photo below) using a new microscope at the Institute.

Twenty-five teams from 12 Bermuda schools and educational organizations will converge on the National Sports Centre on Saturday, April 22, for the 2017 MATE Bermuda Regional Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) Challenge. The program, hosted by BIOS, is part of the Mid-Atlantic Robotics IN Education Program (MARINE), with lead donor support from HSBC.

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.

Each spring, when daffodils and other flowers emerge in gardens, tiny ocean plants called phytoplankton also undergo a surge of production and rapid growth near the surface of the Sargasso Sea. Although each marine phytoplankton is small—tinier than the period at the end of this sentence—it carries tremendous responsibilities.

More than 50 people spent April 29 at BIOS during the Young Presidents’ Organization’s Family Day, providing an opportunity for the Institute to highlight research and education activities. The event included tours of BIOS’s research vessel Atlantic Explorer (by captain George Gunther pictured above); BIOS faculty member Andrea Bodner’s science laboratories (pictured below); and the MAGIC Room, for a brief talk by Institute director Bill Curry and a look at the glider program.

More than a flower, the Oleander is a container ship that provides weekly service between Hamilton, Bermuda, and Port Elizabeth, N.J. In so doing, the ship traverses water from three very widely separated domains: cold, fresh subpolar water from the Labrador Sea; hot, salty Gulf Stream water from the tropics via the Gulf of Mexico; and the large body of warm, salty subtropical water south of the Gulf Stream.

For the last 12 years, hundreds of students have descended upon BIOS during the summer months for a unique program that combines experiential education with SCUBA training: the Waterstart program. Founded in 2001 by marine science educator JP Skinner, the program evolved from a small camp offered for just two weeks during the summer to multiple weeklong camps throughout the summer months.

Growing up in England, Rob Cawthorn dreamed of a farming life, but instead spent nearly four decades in the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, and animal health industries. He visited Bermuda for annual meetings and vacations while working for a company in Canada, and—smitten with the island’s climate and proximity to the U.S. and Europe—retired here in 1999 with his wife, Sue. That year he learned about BIOS [then the Bermuda Biological Station for Research] and soon after began serving on its board.

The pool at the National Sports Centre hosts numerous aquatic competitions throughout the year, but perhaps none as unique as the MATE Bermuda Regional Challenge. The annual challenge, organized by BIOS’s Ocean Academy and supported by lead donor HSBC, is the culmination of months of work by teams of students on the design, construction, and operation of remotely operated vehicles, or ROVs. The challenge is also the final event in the BIOS Mid-Atlantic Robotics IN Education (MARINE) program, which uses a focus on marine robotics to bring science and technology curricula into classrooms around the island.