Growing up in South Rhode Island as one of five children, George Gunther, 55, spent most of his free time on a boat either fishing or tending to his family’s lobster traps. The saltwater soaked into his veins, so to speak, and when he turned 20, his father co-signed a loan for a 38-foot (12-meter) houseboat, which Gunther proceeded to live on for a decade.

Just 50 miles (80 kilometers) offshore of Bermuda, an unusual meeting took place this fall—not of people, but of three underwater robotic vehicles called gliders. Two of the gliders are owned and operated by BIOS as part of the Mid-Atlantic Glider Initiative and Collaboration (MAGIC) program. These vehicles, named Anna and Minnie, are equipped with a variety of sensors that measure ocean properties including pressure, temperature, salinity, oxygen, chlorophyll, and nutrients. The gliders have been diving and climbing from between the sea surface and depths near 2,500 feet (900 meters), while tracing a bow-tie-shaped route continuously surveying a 12-square-mile (20-square-kilometer) patch of ocean for the last six months.

A donation to BIOS means empowering Bermuda’s students. For students from Harrington Sound Primary, that means an annual field trip on a BIOS research vessel for a plankton tow. For Clearwater Middle School students, it means learning from BIOS educators about marine debris, then personally participating in a beach clean up.

Since 2015, the Mid-Atlantic Robotics IN Education (MARINE) program has been a core component of BIOS’s Ocean Academy, which offers a suite of hands-on education and research opportunities for students and teachers in Bermuda. BIOS is pleased to announce that MARINE has a new lead sponsor in RenaissanceRe, which has generously funded the program for the next two years, supporting the program’s goals of engaging participants in scientific concepts and enhancing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education in the classroom.

In 2000, BIOS realized its vision of serving as a year-round educational institute with the development of spring and fall semester programs designed for undergraduate students interested in ocean and atmospheric sciences. The initial fall semester program consisted of three courses—coral reef ecology, marine invertebrate zoology, and marine biology and oceanographic research—and was created in partnership with the University of Rhode Island (URI) and Roger Williams University (RWU), both located in Rhode Island on the east coast of the United States.

Plankton is a general term referring to any organism that does not have the ability to swim against prevailing currents. These organisms range from bacteria and viruses all the way to large gelatinous organisms, such as jellyfish.

Since 1987, the National Science Foundation (NSF) has funded a research internship for undergraduate students called the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. The internships, which usually run for 10 to 12 weeks, are hosted at universities, research institutions, and professional scientific organizations and allow participants to work alongside faculty members and scientists on research projects in a wide range of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.

A Bermuda-tested camera that is so small and lightweight that it can rest on top of a credit card, yet is robust enough to withstand pressure from tons of ocean water while capturing video and photos at depths up to 18,044 feet (5,500 meters), has made the cover of the monthly marine sciences journal Deep Sea Oceanography, Part I.

Canadian Associates of BIOS (CABIOS) student Annaliese Meyer, a microbiology student who worked with BIOS chemical oceanographer Damian Grundle, presented at two conferences in 2019 and early this summer moves to Australia for continued research in astrobiology.

A partnership between BIOS and two Massachusetts-based institutions was strengthened with the addition of a new microbial oceanography course, held for the first time at BIOS in January.