Source: Ocean Academy Blogger

In a nod to the value of crowdsourcing as an effective forecasting method, the Risk Prediction Initiative (RPI2.0) announces the start of its seasonal forecast competition, in which participants can win up to $5000.

Colonies of corals build reefs. As stony corals construct new animals on top of themselves, the lower sections die. The skeletons of these hard corals form the structure of the reef. Sand fills in the framework and calcareous algae cements it.

Ruth Curry, Senior Research Specialist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), is used to the challenges that come with deep-ocean research; after all, she has spent the last three decades measuring circulation pathways in the Atlantic Ocean. But she never expected that, on a calm day in November, she’d require the help of two ships and an underwater robot to literally save her research program, an undertaking she describes as, “the most exciting thing I’ve done in my 32 years of going to sea.”

Happy Holidays

Some of our achievements in 2012 using ocean science for human good include work to:

Source: RPI2.0

In the two-week period from January 21 through February 1, over 1000 students and teachers from 18 different primary schools around the island came to BIOS for the 2013 BIOS Explorer program. This year’s theme, “Expedition Sargasso,” focused on the biology, chemistry, and physics of the Sargasso Sea – the only sea in the world bounded by currents instead of land masses.

Bermuda’s coral reefs could be indirectly impacted by the 2010 BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig explosion that saw millions of gallons of oil leaked into the ocean — ironically not by the oil, but by chemicals used in the clean up.

Many organisms have unique distributions that vary across the earth’s surface, following lines of latitude, elevation gradients, and habitat types. A plant or animal’s distribution pattern, or biogeography, can help scientists understand what environmental factors allow the organism to flourish in certain areas, while failing to take hold in others.