Scientists estimate there are more than a million times more viruses in the ocean than stars in the universe. While wildly abundant, their tiny sizes present a big a hurdle to fully understanding their function in ocean ecosystems. If a cell were the size of a baseball stadium, a virus would be roughly the size of a baseball, so not only are viruses difficult to see under the microscope, but even gathering enough of their genetic material to analyze can be tricky.

After five years, with more than 25 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals, six dedicated research cruises, and more than 45 presentations at national and international meetings, the BIOS-SCOPE (Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences – Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology) program has received five years of additional funding from the Simons Foundation International to continue its study of the microbial oceanography of the Sargasso Sea.

Naomi Villiot knew the path to research abroad during a global health crisis wouldn’t be easy or simple. However, “after a great deal of paperwork, navigating canceled flights, virus testing, and isolation for days upon arrival in Bermuda in September, I have been able to continue with my research,” said Villiot, who hails from a small island in France and studies at a British university.

Sampling offshore Bermuda this July, the BIOS-SCOPE (Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences – Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology) program completed its first full year of study to learn how marine microbes produce, transform, and leave behind dissolved organic matter as the seasons progress, and microbial communities wax and wane.

At midnight on a warm night off Bermuda in July, research technician Joe Cope and a small team of crew members prepared to deploy a net system stretching nearly the length of a city bus from the stern of the research vessel Atlantic Explorer. Though it’s not unusual for oceanographers to work around the clock during a research cruise, the timing of this particular cast was important. Every night, under cover of darkness, the marine animals they hoped to capture—some a few inches in length, others the size of a sand grain—come to the surface to feed on phytoplankton, after spending the daylight hours far below the surface, hiding from predators.

A molecular facility will enhance sample processing for researchers and experiential learning for students

To maintain the unparalleled 27-year record of natural ocean processes and human-induced change at the Bermuda Atlantic Time-series Study (BATS) site, four BIOS research technicians work to collect monthly measurements at sea, process samples in the lab, and analyze incoming data.  Over the past year, each of them has also gone beyond their basic duties with research forays into the time-series dataset.  This month, the four traveled to New Orleans, Louisiana, to present their results at the 2016 Ocean Sciences Meeting.

The latest Scientist Selfie video, promoted by the National Science Foundation (NSF), features BIOS Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) intern Jerry Goss and his studies of plankton with BIOS ecologist Leocadio Blanco-Bercial.

After a year of shark attacks, leaking instruments, and a hiatus resulting from the global COVID-19 pandemic, BIOS’s gliders are back to work in the waters offshore Bermuda.

In mid-November, the BIOS-operated research vessel Atlantic Explorer headed into the Sargasso Sea for the eighth research cruise as part of the multi-year, multi-institutional BIOS-SCOPE (Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences – Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology) project. Since 2015, scientists from Bermuda, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States have converged at BIOS to investigate the microbial ecology of the Sargasso Sea and understand how organic matter (carbon) cycles within the marine environment.