Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences

The Great Southern Coccolithophore Belt Expedition of 2012
Bigelow Laboratory leads a five-week, multi-institutional transect across the Southern Ocean.


Photo by Rebecca Fowler.

Led by Chief Scientist Dr. Barney Balch, a multi-institutional team of researchers left Durban, South Africa on February 18 aboard the R/V Roger Revelle for a 35-day transect across the Southern Ocean to Freemantle, Australia, to investigate the massive phytoplankton bloom known as the Great Southern Coccolithophore Belt. The annual bloom covers over 26% of the world’s ocean and has a major role in global biogeochemistry and climate change feedbacks. Scientists on board are gathering samples and conducting shipboard experiments at 120 stations over the 5,808-mile cruise track. This is the second expedition funded by the National Science Foundation to study this largely unexplored phenomenon of the global ocean. Balch led a coccolithophore belt expedition team across the South Atlantic in early 2011. Read the 2012 Cruise Blog.

Photo of New Campus Selected as One of Engineering News-Record’s 2011 Images of the Year

The image below, taken by photographer Christopher Barnes at the Laboratory’s campus construction site in East Boothbay last October, has been chosen as one of Engineering News-Record’s “Images of the Year in Construction” 2011 contest winners. Selected from hundreds of photographs submitted every year, the winning photographs are those that “best capture the mood and flavor of construction” over the previous 12 months.


©christopherbarnes.com

REU Students Attend 2012 Ocean Sciences Meeting

The Laboratory is proud to report that three of last summer’s REU Program students—Alexander Vermont, Kai Eldredge, and Nicole Messerman—received awards to attend the 2012 Ocean Sciences Meeting and present posters about their research. The Ocean Science Meeting, held this year from February 20 through 24 in Salt Lake City, Utah, is sponsored by The Oceanography Society, the Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography and the American Geophysical Union and draws an international group of over 4,000 scientists, students, and media representatives.

Consigli Construction Hosts Bigelow Event at Harvard Club in Boston

We would like to send a special thank you to Consigli Construction President Anthony Consigli for hosting a reception for Bigelow Laboratory at the Harvard Club in downtown Boston on February 9. Consigli is the construction management company for the new campus project, and organized this event to help our outreach and fundraising efforts outside Maine. The reception featured Bigelow Executive Director Graham Shimmield and Director of the Office Corporate Alliances and Technology Transfer Mark Bloom, who discussed Bigelow Laboratory’s strategy for creating an “entrepreneurial ecosystem” and expanding the Laboratory’s role in the global innovation economy. Over 40 guests from the Boston area attended the event, including current donors and biotech industry professionals interested in the Laboratory’s growing technology transfer program.

Above: Boston, February 9, 2012. Courtesy of Consigli Construction.


Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences …exploring the world’s ocean, from microbes to global ecosystems