Bermuda Day 2

Today has been a very interesting day. After a wonderful breakfast (the food is amazing for a research facility), we got an introduction to BIOS. They gave us some background such as the fact that it was established in 1903 by a guy from NYU and a guy from Harvard as a summer program. The NSF helps to fund the $12 million budget but the 12-15 scientists who work here have to find grants to pay their salary. We also got the downlow on Bermuda itself, such as the fact that 250,000 people visit the island every year and about 70,000 people live on this ~20 mile chain of islands. It was interesting to hear about how the island was formed and some of their more modern issues like septic systems on a porous island (meaning there are certain places you really shouldn't go swimming) or the fact that if they got cut off from the rest of the world they would only last a week. They've done some good things like getting tracer additives added to oil tankers so oil spills/leaks/dumps can be traced back to the ship they came from. They've done some strange things too, like fill in their wetlands with domestic trash to cut down on yellow fever outbreaks.

After our introduction to the island we got a tour of the labs on campus. It was amazing to learn about the research they're doing here. We saw a lab where they study carbon dioxide in the water to monitor ocean acidification. They've been monitoring one of their stations for more than 50 years. They know more about this one little piece of ocean than anyone knows about anywhere else in the world's oceans. So they're looking for signs of ocean acidification. They talked about how many people are trying to say we need to use iron to seed the plankton and use it as a carbon sink. The scientists here are proving that the carbon dioxide doesn't sink. It just gets recycled into the biomass at the surface of the ocean... in other words, it's a terrible idea.

Then we talked to an American woman who had been studying the genetic causes of cancer in humans but ended up here working on aging in sea urchins.She looks at three different types of urchins, the common purple urchin that lives 2-3 years, the purple urchin that lives about 50 years, and the red urchin that can live to be 200 years old. These animals are well studied because they are an important fishery (sushi) and so we know a lot about them to be a baseline. They are studying the muscles in the urchins and have found that the common purple ones show signs of aging just like a human, the purple ones spends lots of energy to repair the muscle tissue to prevent again and mutation of genes (which causes cancer), but the red urchins decrease the amount of damage that occurs all together. They are exposing the cells to cancer levels that would kill a human being and the urchin is showing no signs of damage at all. Amazing.

There are other labs studying the nutrients in the ocean. For example the lack of nitrogen and phosphorus in the water here is what makes it soooo blue.

They're studying the bacteria in the water, they had to find special dye to even discover them. The bacteria in the ocean are so small they keep deleting parts of their DNA that they don't use. The ocean is very stable over time so they don't change much and they don't need them. They study sediment and plankton but not fish. Bermuda is also home to Reinsurance. It's the companies that insure the insurance companies. So BIOS has developed the Risk Prediction Initiative. They study hurricanes, water temperatures and windsheers to predict where hurricanes are going. Their models are better than the NWS and they are looking to start a PHD program to train someone to learn the models. Currently it takes 5 people, some scientists, business people, risk analyzers, etc. Their choice candidate would be a businessman with a passion for nature... so if you know anyone....

Another lab is studying corals and how ocean acidification will affect them. For their first experiment they just put in straight acid which, no surprise here, destroyed the corals. So they decided to do it with different levels of carbon dioxide (which is what's happening) and the corals looked fine, but they were brittle and hollow which leaves them vulnerable to predation and hurricanes. Bermuda depends on it's reefs for protection so this is very important knowledge. The final lab we looked at was an area where they are studying algae to make biodiesel which is much more effective and energy efficient that ethanol made from corn/soybeans/etc. They actually use the same old fashioned recipe to make soap (lye etc) and add methanol to make great biodiesel.

Then we had lunch which was followed by a trek to go snorkeling. We had to hike a ways along the ocean. It was very windy so we had to find a sheltered spot. The scenery was beautiful even though the wind was wicked.

When we got to the spot everyone had to drop their gear and get suited up. Surprisingly mine wasn't the only hot pink suit like I expected. I'll try to get a picture with her tomorrow.

My dive buddy Kaitlyn got in pretty quickly.

 

There were corals and sponges everywhere. There were also lots and lots of sea cucumbers. They were the biggest ones I've ever seen. We even found this one that was a different color:

Then, after passing a really creepy sunken buoy, I finally saw one of the animals on my life list:

It was an octopus!! I've never seen one in the wild. It was beautiful. I didn't want to get any closer and scare it. Then we snorkeled off and found a second animal on my life long list of animals I want to see! A nudibranch!

I was looking at an anemone and this guy started moving. He's facing downwards. Those are antennae on the bottom and the fluffy parts on the middle are its gills. Beautiful! There's also a fanworm on the lefthand side. These were the two animals on my list of things I wanted to see while I was here and I got them on the first day. So I need to come up with some new ones! I knew those rainbows were good luck! Now if only we can turn off the wind and rain!

After showers we had a class on stat methods. Thank goodness for a whole semester of that already! Then dinner followed by more stats. Then we broke up into two groups to come up with a research project for tomorrow while we're snorkeling. My group is going to the mangroves and studying Cassiopeia, the upside down jellyfish. We spent an hour hashing out our methods before calling it a night. I need to read a scientific article for homework for the class I missed yesterday so I'm getting ready to knock that out so we can play for the rest of the week!! Wow! I've been doing the happy dance all day :-)