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 photograph taken over 150 years ago, originally intended to document British overseas military installations in Bermuda, is now a historical reference point helping scientists measure the impacts of local sea-level rise. Although the subjects of the photograph were the Commissioner’s House and various fortifications along the slip in the Royal Naval Dockyard, the image also captured a fixed biological phenomenon that can be used to interpret sea-level: a stable community of cyanobacteria that lives just above the high-water mark.

Paul Gensbigler, 20, is no stranger to the water, having spent the past two years studying the health of the Chesapeake Bay, the largest estuary in the United States. A junior majoring in molecular and cellular biology at Johns Hopkins University (JHU) in Maryland, Gensbigler is researching the microbes that help control nutrient levels in the Bay. However, this January he traded the brackish waters of the northern Chesapeake for the salty waters of the northern Atlantic in a “Hopkins Intersession Abroad” program.

Living at the edge of darkness, the community of microbes and tiny animals in the ocean’s twilight zone upcycle nutrients to ensure their survival. A study led by researchers at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa revealed that small, free-floating animals called zooplankton rely mainly on an even smaller class of organisms, called microzooplankton, to consolidate the sparse waste products in the water and transform it into higher-quality food. The study was published in Limnology and Oceanography.

New research published in Nature has revealed the importance of mineral forms of iron in regulating the cycling of this bio-essential nutrient in the ocean.

This summer marks year two of a three-year ASU BIOS study designed to expand understanding of how ocean eddies might be affecting coral reefs, as well as what role eddies may have played in reef accretion and overall functioning in the past.

Now in its eighth year, BIOS-SCOPE is a multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary initiative that annually gathers scientists from Bermuda, Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States to explore fundamental questions about the ocean’s biogeochemical cycles and how diverse communities of marine microbes influence the carbon cycle and other fundamental processes and, ultimately, the planet’s ability to sustain life. An overarching goal of the project is to form and foster collaborations across scientific disciplines, an aspect that enables the team to advance their understanding of the interactions of organisms and compounds at various scales, across both time and ocean depths. Along the way, the principals and collaborators of BIOS-SCOPE (Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences – Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology) have formed professional bonds and friendships that add value to the work. On the eve of the program’s eleventh cruise from ASU BIOS – with 18 scientists and two marine science technicians on board, Currents spoke with BIOS-SCOPE Co-Principal Investigators and adjunct faculty Craig Carlson (University of California, Santa Barbara) and Stephen Giovannoni (Oregon State University) and Investigator Rachel Parsons (ASU BIOS Microbial Ecology Laboratory) about the project’s past, present and future.

A newly described coccolithophore species, Calciopappus curvus was recently found in 2020 in the Sargasso Sea near Bermuda by scientists affiliated with the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences, a unit of the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory at Arizona State University (ASU BIOS). This newly named species has also been observed prior to its discovery off Bermuda in water samples from far-flung locations as the North Atlantic to tropical and subtropical regions of the Mediterranean, the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Ocean.

Jurassic Park’s Dr. Ian Malcolm was right. Against seemingly impossible odds, life often does “find a way.” Fictional dinosaurs notwithstanding, creatures large and small display impressive abilities to adapt to changing conditions. Sometimes, though, the changes are so rapid and profound that “life” starts losing its way. Sometimes, “life” needs a hand.

More than three dozen physical and social scientists, artists, communicators and others gathered at ASU BIOS (or joined online) in mid-September to share ideas and plan future efforts to improve the understanding of wildfires and their impacts on oceans and other global environments, including society.