This September, BIOS is debuting a new citizen science program designed to encourage Bermuda’s residents and visitors to engage with the natural environment by collecting data from around the island. By utilizing an array of online tools and apps, and working alongside BIOS educators, people have the opportunity to directly contribute to ongoing research at BIOS and local conservation efforts.

Priel Minors, 16, a senior school student at Cedarbridge Academy, was chosen by educators at the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS) and ConnecTech, to participate in a weeklong “BioCoding at Home” course offered virtually by the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory’s DNA Learning Center. BIOS’s Ocean Academy provided a scholarship to cover the cost of the course while ConnecTech provided work space and coding support.

In July, BIOS collaborated with the Bermuda National Library (BNL) to produce a virtual reading session for the Youth Library’s summer reading program. This program, designed to encourage school-aged children to continue using their literacy skills during the summer months, runs from late June through late August and consists of a variety activities and workshops that young readers can participate in to earn points for prizes.

Among the many lessons we’ve learned from the COVID-19 pandemic is the value of having a highly skilled scientific workforce that is capable of leveraging its education to serve the broader community during a time of need.

Earlier this year, Leocadio Blanco-Bercial, a zooplankton ecologist at BIOS, was awarded funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a three-year investigation to determine how environmental variables, such as temperature and oxygen, influence the structure of zooplankton communities found within the ocean’s twilight zone (depths between 650 to 3000 feet, or 200 to 1000 meters), also known as the “midwater.”

Read more here. 

After the successful inaugural episode of Ocean Diaries—a virtual education program and collaboration that aired as a Facebook Live event on the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum, and Zoo (BAMZ) Facebook page last month to over 2,000 views—the team of educators at BAMZ, the Bermuda Zoological Society (BZS), BIOS, and the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute (BUEI) quickly remobilized to begin working on episode 2.

Source: Ocean Academy Blogger

In the two-week period from January 21 through February 1, over 1000 students and teachers from 18 different primary schools around the island came to BIOS for the 2013 BIOS Explorer program. This year’s theme, “Expedition Sargasso,” focused on the biology, chemistry, and physics of the Sargasso Sea – the only sea in the world bounded by currents instead of land masses.

Girl Power in Science! As part of her NOAA Teacher at Sea experience, Kaitlin Baird (BIOS’s Science in Education Coordinator) compiled a list of women working in diverse aspects of ocean science research and education.