On the first day of the Bermuda half-term school holiday—Monday, October 21, 2019—18 teachers attended a workshop at BIOS entitled “Hurricanes: Data in the Classroom.” The workshop was offered as part of the BIOS Curriculum Enrichment Program, which offers educational support and resources to students and teachers, in an effort to boost the availability of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) learning experiences in Bermuda. Through a partnership with the Bermuda Union of Teachers, the Curriculum Enrichment Program allows BIOS scientists and educators to share aspects of BIOS’s research for classroom lessons.

Two new underwater gliders arrived at BIOS in mid July and are expected to be gathering data in the waters around Bermuda by the end of the summer. The gliders, each resembling a 6-foot-long airplane, operate on battery power at sea with direction from land-based researchers while carrying a payload of sensors that measure ocean properties such as salinity, temperature, oxygen, nutrients, and currents.

Within the contours of oceanographic data are the stories of great ocean currents, tiny plankton, and life-sustaining nutrients at the surface of the sea.  University students learn to study ocean properties through plots and graphs of these data, but rarely do they get hands-on experience with the instruments that generated them. A new BIOS summer course aims to change that by introducing students to the methods and technologies that have become the bread and butter of modern oceanography.

This summer marks the third year that BIOS has offered its Modern Observational Oceanography (MOO) course to undergraduate and postgraduate students enrolled in oceanography programs. The course aims to provide students with a broad introduction to, and practical experience in, the field of observational oceanography—a rapidly developing area of study that focuses on using a variety of technologies and methods to further our understanding of how the physical state of the ocean is changing.

Three days before Hurricane Gonzalo hit Bermuda in October, BIOS researchers launched their new glider Anna directly into the storm’s path for a rare look at hurricane dynamics below the sea surface.

Come out for a fascinating evening to get inside the development and passage of Hurricane Gonzalo and its atmospheric effects on Bermuda. Get a deeper look at the impact of the storm on the surrounding ocean as seen by the BIOS glider system deployed in the path of the hurricane.

Just 50 miles (80 kilometers) offshore of Bermuda, an unusual meeting took place this fall—not of people, but of three underwater robotic vehicles called gliders. Two of the gliders are owned and operated by BIOS as part of the Mid-Atlantic Glider Initiative and Collaboration (MAGIC) program. These vehicles, named Anna and Minnie, are equipped with a variety of sensors that measure ocean properties including pressure, temperature, salinity, oxygen, chlorophyll, and nutrients. The gliders have been diving and climbing from between the sea surface and depths near 2,500 feet (900 meters), while tracing a bow-tie-shaped route continuously surveying a 12-square-mile (20-square-kilometer) patch of ocean for the last six months.

Researchers and students representing BIOS gathered in San Diego, California, in mid-February to participate in the biennial Ocean Sciences meeting. The flagship conference, held jointly by the Oceanography Society, the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography, and the American Geophysical Union, attracted nearly 5,000 scientists, managers, and educators from around the globe.