MSI -  Meet the Summer 2012 Marine Science Interns:

               James Biggs                           Eric Witte


           Rawleigh Tucker                    Daniel Maguire


              Jeral Jackman               Joshua Stephens    


              Kori Jackman                    Megan Thresh

Our interns arrived with a great enthusiasm to learn about animal life in the Sargasso Sea.  On Monday, they began “Expedition Sargasso” by practicing the point intercept method of data collection.  This method involves laying down 30-meter transect tape along the reef and carefully recording the different corals they find at each meter as they make their way along the tape. They went to the dive site Arches along the South shore of Bermuda to collect their first set of data.

On the way back to BIOS, the interns participated in a plankton tow.  This involves trawling for plankton using a large wind-sock shaped filter, then observing the collected plankton in a lab.  Through microscopes, the interns were able to identify a plethora of different organisms, including shrimp, arrow worms, copepods, krill, and a vast array of fish eggs.

Today, our interns continued their scientific investigation by collecting data using the belt and video transect methods at North Rock, the largest coral reef in Bermuda.  In addition to collecting data, the interns practiced underwater videography by filming along the path of their transect lines.  The interns were able to take the data from the two days of research diving to create bar graphs for both sites showing the distribution of coral colonies per meter squared for the top 5 most common corals in Bermuda.  The students also practiced coral identification and are looking forward to playing Coral Jeopardy tomorrow.

In their own words:

Daniel: Today I learned about different types of coral, and the frequency with which we find those corals along the North Rock… I also saw trumpet fish.