Like all marine scientists, ecologist Leocadio Blanco-Bercial rejoices in the discovery of rare sea creatures. He just never expected to find them showing up in his toilet water.

The quest to understand a very small, yet critically important, part of the marine food web proved especially challenging this spring during the ongoing global health pandemic. For participating scientists and university students, the process started in December 2020 with a 14-day quarantine period in Hawaii, where they were prohibited from leaving their hotel rooms, even for a walk. Then there were five COVID-19 tests for each (all negative). Next came days of sea travel past the Tahitian Islands and the Equator, with all 39 people on board the research vessel Roger Revelle wearing masks and trying to stay socially distant for the first two weeks of the trip (as much as possible on a 277-foot ship).

While working on board a research vessel positioned 240 miles offshore Ireland in the Atlantic, BIOS zooplankton ecologist Amy Maas announced this month the publication of three new papers in science research journals. Maas, who has spent May at sea with 26 other scientists for the multi-year EXPORTS project (EXport Processes in the Ocean from Remote Sensing), used Instagram to promote the just-released science publications.

Two types of zooplankton will be featured at the Bermuda National Gallery (BNG) beginning this summer in a mixed-media exhibit dedicated to reminding us how art can be used to more deeply appreciate our place on this planet. Copepods, small marine crustaceans, and pteropods, tiny marine snails also known as “sea butterflies,” are the focus of this collaborative effort between BIOS and BNG. Some of the artists with works displayed in the series have spent time at BIOS working alongside zooplankton ecologists Leocadio Blanco-Bercial and Amy Maas as they investigate some of the ocean’s smallest and most critically important members of the marine food web.

BIOS senior scientist and director of research Nick Bates boosted his research portfolio earlier this month when he received news of three funding renewals for long-term ocean-monitoring programs at BIOS.

The Oceanic Flux Program (OFP), one of the world’s longest-running time-series, has received continued funding to help the oceanographic community answer ongoing questions about the connections between climate and the particle debris that sinks through the ocean’s water column. This process, called the particle flux, is a major control on the global carbon cycle and provides the fuel to support most biological processes operating within the ocean’s deep interior.

Nine Bermuda College students participated in lectures, hands-on laboratory activities, and a plankton-collecting trip during a two-day climate change workshop earlier this month through a partnership between BIOS’s Ocean Academy and the United States Consulate General in Bermuda.

This summer, after a three-week quarantine preceding a six-week research cruise more than 200 miles offshore the United Kingdom, zooplankton ecologist Amy Maas returned to BIOS to await the arrival of more than 800 frozen zooplankton samples she had collected at sea. Preserved in vials and stored on dry ice, she expected them to arrive by expedited air mail in three days. Then she could begin detailed study of the organisms, from calculating their metabolic rates to measuring their individual and community sizes.

BIOS acquired three new instruments this spring to enrich investigations into the roles and interactions between microbial communities and migrating zooplankton in the Sargasso Sea.

Sea butterflies are tiny marine snails but, instead of a traditional foot, they have a pair of wing-like appendages. These propel them on their daily migration from the sea surface, where they feed, down to deeper, darker waters to hide from predators.