BIOS welcomed the first student users of its new high-tech facility known as the MAGIC Room—a room designed to facilitate data analyses, scientific collaboration, and learning among students and visitors from Bermuda and abroad. Students sat at a large, U-shaped table in swivel chairs that pivoted for views of multiple screens, including a multi-screen video wall at the front of the room and an 84-inch high-definition touchscreen on an adjacent wall. As underwater gliders roamed the ocean 50 miles away, students discussed the gliders’ near-real time measurements of oxygen, salinity, current strength, and other incoming physical and chemical data.

Justin Smith was raised in a fishing family in Gig Harbor, Washington, but a crash in the local fishing economy diverted him from the family business. Knowing he liked ships and being on the water, he decided to explore oceanography in college. Within his first month at the University of Hawaii, he discovered the Hawaii Ocean Time-series program and the research vessel Kilo Moana. His volunteer position on the ship led to a job in the physical oceanography lab. By graduation in 2009 he had logged 220 days at sea, and was inspired to pursue a hands-on, “jack-of-all-trades” career as a marine technician in the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System (UNOLS) fleet.  

BIOS’s Ocean Academy program has a new partner in delivering hands-on science education and learning opportunities to Bermuda’s students: The Chatmore Preparatory School.

Acting U.S. Consul General Tom Edwardsen visited BIOS on June 22 for a tour of the Institute led by President and CEO Bill Curry. The two-hour tour gave Edwardsen, who is expected to remain in his post until this summer, an opportunity to learn about BIOS’s research and education programs.

Each spring, when daffodils and other flowers emerge in gardens, tiny ocean plants called phytoplankton also undergo a surge of production and rapid growth near the surface of the Sargasso Sea. Although each marine phytoplankton is small—tinier than the period at the end of this sentence—it carries tremendous responsibilities.

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.

Not long after sunrise on July 24, a BIOS-operated ocean glider named Jack climbed slowly from a depth of nearly a half-mile offshore Bermuda toward the sea surface as it’s sensors collected and measured ocean properties, including temperature, salinity, oxygen, chlorophyll, and currents. It was a routine operation for Jack, an airplane-shaped vehicle that has traveled a similar path thousands of times over the past two years for BIOS researchers in the Sargasso Sea.

BIOS’s Risk Prediction Initiative (RPI) is undertaking new research focused on hurricane risk specific to Bermuda, in addition to its traditional focus on global catastrophic risk.

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.