Two types of zooplankton will be featured at the Bermuda National Gallery (BNG) beginning this summer in a mixed-media exhibit dedicated to reminding us how art can be used to more deeply appreciate our place on this planet. Copepods, small marine crustaceans, and pteropods, tiny marine snails also known as “sea butterflies,” are the focus of this collaborative effort between BIOS and BNG. Some of the artists with works displayed in the series have spent time at BIOS working alongside zooplankton ecologists Leocadio Blanco-Bercial and Amy Maas as they investigate some of the ocean’s smallest and most critically important members of the marine food web.

A new painting graces the walls of the BIOS reception building commemorating friendships formed during the Institute’s 2019 National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) internship and fall semester program. Commissioned by REU intern Harvey Castillo, then a biology major at Northern Arizona University (U.S.), and painted by visual artist Claudia Palacios, the piece reproduces a photograph of Castillo and fellow students watching a sunset from the dock at the BIOS waterfront.

Nine Bermuda College students participated in lectures, hands-on laboratory activities, and a plankton-collecting trip during a two-day climate change workshop earlier this month through a partnership between BIOS’s Ocean Academy and the United States Consulate General in Bermuda.

This summer, after a three-week quarantine preceding a six-week research cruise more than 200 miles offshore the United Kingdom, zooplankton ecologist Amy Maas returned to BIOS to await the arrival of more than 800 frozen zooplankton samples she had collected at sea. Preserved in vials and stored on dry ice, she expected them to arrive by expedited air mail in three days. Then she could begin detailed study of the organisms, from calculating their metabolic rates to measuring their individual and community sizes.

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.

BIOS acquired three new instruments this spring to enrich investigations into the roles and interactions between microbial communities and migrating zooplankton in the Sargasso Sea.

Sea butterflies are tiny marine snails but, instead of a traditional foot, they have a pair of wing-like appendages. These propel them on their daily migration from the sea surface, where they feed, down to deeper, darker waters to hide from predators.

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.