For the last nine years, students in the Earth Science program at the University of Oxford in England have visited BIOS to gain first-hand knowledge of coastal and deep-water oceanography, as well as the unique geology of Bermuda.

Amid growing concern regarding the current federal funding climate for ocean science research, the National Science Foundation (NSF) just announced continued support for the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) research program at BIOS. According to Dr. Nicholas Bates, Senior Scientist and Associate Director of Research at BIOS and Principal Investigator of the BATS project, “This represents about $14 million from NSF to BIOS over the next five years: approximately $6 million for research and roughly another $8 million to support science days at sea aboard the R/V Atlantic Explorer.” This announcement comes on the heels of a $4 million award from NSF last year to support Hydrostation S, the world’s longest-running hydrographic time-series, for another five years. Together, these two awards represent a significant commitment by NSF to ocean time-series off Bermuda.

In addition to salt, seawater contains a variety of other dissolved and particulate materials, such as sediment, organic materials, and living cells. Because of their varying sizes and compositions, each of these particles absorbs and reflects light differently. Oceanographers use this to their advantage—by shining a beam of light through the water and measuring how much light is absorbed or scattered, they can get an idea of the types and abundances of particles that are present.

In the late 1980s scientists at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) were looking for a way to meaningfully contribute to the Joint Global Ocean Flux Study (JGOFS). This international program involved the creation and maintenance of monitoring stations around the world, each collecting vast amounts of data on dissolved carbon in the ocean and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. BIOS was already home to Hydrostation S (an ocean data time-series station established in 1954), but the scientists envisioned a time-series station that could provide long-term measurements from the open ocean off Bermuda.

“How resilient are coral reefs to global climate change?”

Successful scientific research is rarely a one-person endeavor, particularly when the research is interdisciplinary in nature, or requires field or laboratory investigations in multiple environments. The collaborative nature of modern ocean science research is evident in a recent publication in Science Advances, the peer-reviewed scientific journal published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

In April, the Oceanic Flux Program (OFP), the longest running deep ocean time-series of its kind, marked its 40th year of operation. Since 1978, the OFP’s three sediment traps have continuously sampled sinking particulate debris, called particle flux, at depths of 1,640; 4,900; and 10,500 feet (500; 1,500; and 3,200 meters) at a location about 45 miles (75 kilometers) southeast of Bermuda.

Research on coastal sediments, funded in part by BIOS’s Risk Prediction Initiative, shows that prehistoric hurricanes along the northern East Coast of the United States were likely more frequent and intense than those that have hit within recorded history.  The hurricanes that battered New England in the first millennium were produced in part by warmer sea surface temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean.  By looking to the past, these data can help scientists better predict the frequency and intensity of future hurricanes as the ocean continues to warm due to climate change.

Funds granted in May by the National Science Foundation will allow BIOS scientists to continue their research through 2023 at the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) site, a project established in 1988 by BIOS and collaborators to examine the “time-varying” components of the ocean carbon cycle, ocean physics, and biology.

Three decades ago, scientists came to Bermuda to address “big picture” questions about the ocean by collecting data on fundamental physical, chemical, and biological parameters throughout the water column in the Sargasso Sea. They knew that critical questions about how the ocean functions, such as how it responds to global climate change, could only be answered by the collection and subsequent analysis of data gathered continuously over a long period, also known as a time-series study.