In fall 2020, student Aleksandra Crossman spent 12 weeks conducting an internship with BIOS reef systems ecologist Eric Hochberg, supported by a fully-funded scholarship from the Canadian Associates of BIOS (CABIOS). Her project used photomosaics and artificial intelligence to map benthic habitats as part of an environmental assessment carried out for the Bermuda Electric Light Company (BELCO). It proved to be an excellent match and, this winter, Crossman came back to BIOS for a second time for research on coral pigments.

In early February, the Government of Bermuda released a public report titled “The State of Bermuda’s Marine Waters: A Snapshot of Bermuda’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) from the Coastline to 200 nautical miles (nm).” It was released as part of the Bermuda Ocean Prosperity Programme (BOPP), a partnership between the Government of Bermuda, the Waitt Institute, and BIOS designed to sustainably protect and manage the island’s ocean resources. BOPP is also working with the Government and local industries, such as tourism and fisheries, to diversify national revenue and support the development of a “blue economy” that balances the sustainable use of ocean resources with marine ecosystem health.

The Ocean Sciences Meeting (OSM), held jointly between the American Geophysical Union, the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography, and The Oceanography Society, is one of the largest international ocean sciences conferences. The 2022 meeting, which was scheduled to be held in Honolulu, Hawaii will now take place virtually due to COVID-19 related concerns on February 24 through March 4. More than 5,300 scientists from 75 different countries will participate.

In 1991, BIOS became a site for the competitive and prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, which provides participants with the opportunity to work alongside the Institute’s faculty and staff on research projects in a variety of topics in ocean sciences.

Reef scientist Eric Hochberg is principal investigator in a NASA field campaign that will survey more of the world’s coral reefs than ever before, and in greater detail. Credit Eric Hochberg

The GREAT BARRIER REEF, transposed to North America’s west coast, would stretch from Baja California to British Columbia. “How do you study that big of an area by doing hour-long hikes?,” says Eric Hochberg, a marine biologist at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences. Yet for a long time, scientists studying coral have essentially had to do just that. Since the 1950s, says Hochberg, the state of the art has been a mask and a scuba tank. Scientists studying coral reefs do so an hour at a time, until their air runs out.

Coral reefs have almost always been studied up close, by scientists in the water looking at small portions of larger reefs to gather data and knowledge about the larger ecosystems. But NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is taking a step back and getting a wider view, from about 23,000 ft above.

The 13th annual International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS) convened in Honolulu, Hawaii in June with more than 2,500 scientists, policy makers and managers in attendance from 70 countries. The conference theme ‘bridging science to policy’ provided students and professionals with the opportunity to communicate their recent findings and ongoing research programs to an audience with the shared goal of improving coral reef conservation through the application of science. BIOS associate scientist Eric Hochberg co-chaired a session on remote sensing of coral reefs, during which he gave a presentation about the NASA-funded COral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL) mission (of which he is the Principal Investigator). This symposium also saw three BIOS alums from the NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program. Michael Wooster, Naomi Huntley and Mia Thomas (pictured) presented their research in both oral presentations and poster sessions, demonstrating the positive impact this program has on the careers of young scientists.

After six weeks in Australia, NASA’s COral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL) has completed its campaign along the world’s largest reef structure—the Great Barrier Reef. Eric Hochberg, BIOS reef scientist and CORAL principle investigator, says he’s pleased with the “successful conclusion to the first of four field campaigns designed to shed light on the condition and function of representative reef ecosystems around the world.”

After two years, the comprehensive review paper of the NASA Surface Biology and Geology (SBG) Algorithms Working Group, representing the work of 60 scientists from 40 institutions in seven countries, was published last month in the scientific journal Remote Sensing of Environment.