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.

More than a flower, the Oleander is a container ship that provides weekly service between Hamilton, Bermuda, and Port Elizabeth, N.J. In so doing, the ship traverses water from three very widely separated domains: cold, fresh subpolar water from the Labrador Sea; hot, salty Gulf Stream water from the tropics via the Gulf of Mexico; and the large body of warm, salty subtropical water south of the Gulf Stream.

New grants from the National Science Foundation will extend and improve two long-term climate observation programs led by BIOS scientists.

A new five-year grant from the National Science Foundation will update the ship’s instrumentation, and BIOS scientist Ruth Curry will take the helm of the Oleander’s physical data program from oceanographers at the University of Rhode Island and Stony Brook University.

As Bermuda shuttered international travel and local business in response to the COVID-19 pandemic this spring, three container ships continued to deliver a critical supply of food and consumer goods to the island. One of these vessels, the Oleander, has been quietly serving the public, and the scientific community, in another important way for several decades —as a volunteer “ship of opportunity” that acquires important ocean measurements during its weekly voyages between Bermuda and the United States.