Adult corals that survive high-intensity environmental stresses, such as bleaching events, can produce offspring that are better suited to survive in new environments. These results from a series of experiments conducted at BIOS in 2017 and 2018 are deepening scientists’ understanding of how the gradual increase of sea surface temperatures and other environmental disturbances may influence future coral generations.

Primary and secondary students at Warwick Academy, a private school in Bermuda, now have the opportunity to participate in ongoing scientific research thanks to a partnership between BIOS, the school, and the Living Reefs Foundation (LRF), a Bermuda-based non-profit organization. The project is one of the first at the Academy’s newly-constructed waterfront Marine Science Center, allowing students to learn valuable laboratory skills and play a role in restoring coral reefs in Castle Harbor that were damaged by the development of the airport in the 1950s.

After months of precautionary cancellations due to the pandemic, BIOS staff hosted several school groups on campus this June for marine science studies that complement public and private school curriculums.

Earlier this year, Eric Hochberg, a reef systems ecologist at BIOS, was awarded two grants from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to continue lines of investigation stemming from the four-year NASA COral Reef Airborne Laboratory (CORAL) mission. Hochberg was principal investigator of CORAL (2015–2019), which utilized a state-of-the-art airborne sensor, called PRISM, to produce the first comprehensive assessment of reef condition for a large portion of the world’s reefs.

A recently awarded grant from the National Science Foundation is set to bring a variety of improvements to the existing outdoor mesocosm facility at BIOS. Originally constructed in 2018 with funding from the Heising-Simons Foundation, International, the mesocosm facility is essentially a large outdoor aquarium comprising four large tanks (400 gallon, or 1,500 liter) and eight small tanks (130 gallon, or 500 liter) housed under a removable canopy. The tanks are located adjacent to a small laboratory trailer, which is used as a staging area and for sample processing.

A new study published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science has uncovered some unexpected trends in the relationship between coral reefs and their environment, contrary to prevailing scientific expectations and understanding. Authors Eric Hochberg, a BIOS reef systems ecologist, and Michelle Gierach, a scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), used readily-available public data for coral cover (the amount of coral in a given reef area) to conduct a meta-analysis, or an analysis of data from different studies. In this analysis, they statistically related reef condition to a suite of biogeophysical forcing parameters (forcings), such as aragonite saturation state (a figure thought to impact the ability of corals to calcify), significant wave height, number of coral species, and various local threats, among others.

This summer, due to demand from student applicants, BIOS offered two sessions of its Coral Reef Ecology (CRE) course, one that ran from June 28 to July 16 with 13 students, and the other that ran from August 9 to August 27 with 17 students. The courses were co-taught by reef systems ecologist Eric Hochberg and marine benthic ecologist Yvonne Sawall, with teaching assistant (TA) Michael Wooster. Wooster was Hochberg’s National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates intern in 2014 and has been a TA for three BIOS summer courses and three fall semester courses.

In late August, nine undergraduate students from schools across the United States, including Puerto Rico, arrived at BIOS for the 2021 National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) internship program. This annual program, which runs for 12 weeks every fall, pairs undergraduate students with BIOS faculty and research staff for independent research projects in a variety of topics in the marine and atmospheric sciences.

In a major development in the bid to deepen the understanding of the role that the ocean plays in climate science, Arizona State University (ASU) President Michael Crow announced today that ASU, a leading research university, has established a partnership with the Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences (BIOS), one of the longest-serving research institutes dedicated to studying ocean processes in the Western Hemisphere.

BIOS scientists gained a fresh perspective on six-month-old mustard coral larvae (shown in photo above) and tiny lionfish eggs (photo below) using a new microscope at the Institute.