Recent News

Videos/Photos: Start Of ‘Tour De Turtles Race’
Tuesday, August 14, 2012

This morning marked the official start of the race with one turtle being released at Clearwater Beach in St David’s.


Turtles to be released and tracked
Friday, August 10, 2012

At least five green sea turtles with attached satellite transmitters are being released from Clearwater Beach next week.


Tour de Turtles Bermuda: ‘Race On The Rock’
Thursday, August 09, 2012

“Tour de Turtles Bermuda: Race On The Rock” will kick off next week and will see green turtles fitted with GPS satellite transmitters to enable researchers to track their every movement as they “race” across the seas.


Volunteers clean up BAMZ
Thursday, July 26, 2012

​Some 70 students and volunteers from eleven companies participated in The Centre on Philanthropy’s Community Day.


Saving our 'floating golden rainforest' at a local level
Friday, July 13, 2012

FRIDAY, JUNE 13: The Bermuda Alliance for Sargasso Sea formed last June with the intention of supporting a government led plan to protect the Sargasso Sea and the multitude of species that live within it. The Bermuda Sun sat down with four of the BASS member charities to discuss their mission so far.



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Latest News

All the latest updates and news from the Bermuda Aquarium, Museum, and Zoo, one of Bermuda's leading visitor attractions!

Collecting Samples for BAMZ
Royal Gazette
Thursday, June 06, 2013

By Lisa Ray
Published June 7, 2013 at 8:00 am

The crew and research team on-board the 72ft Sea Dragon expedition ship are currently undertaking two expeditions from the Island to find out more about the Sargasso Sea. The Sea Dragon is operated by Pangaea Explorations, and has sailed around 50,000 miles over the last two years as part of a series of research expeditions in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.

During the missions the team are sending a daily blog, with photographs, explaining what they have been doing and what they have found.

Here is the most recent update from the Sea Dragon.

When Wolfgang offered the Aquarist’s a spot on the Sea Dragon, it was thought this would be a great opportunity to venture to the open ocean to collect specimens for our ‘Sargassum Exhibit’, here at BAMZ.

This would prove especially beneficial since the vessel we normally collect in, was currently out of water due to 

annual boat maintenance, plus the fact that Sargassum weed isn’t normally found close inshore, in bulk, at this time of year.

I believed making time for this trip was important. I’m really glad that I did. Not only did the collecting pay off, but the opportunity to network and team build with a great selection of people proved rewarding.

The bulk of my collection was the actual ‘Sargasso weed’ itself. Of the two species associated with Bermuda, the one we collected is the most Common (Sargassum natans). It differs from the less common one (Sargassum fluitans) by have small spines on its blades.

RG_130607_1a.jpeg
Olivia Drescher assists Lisa Ray in the
search through the sargassum weed

I was fortunate enough to also secure both species of fish associated with Sargassum rafts. The small angler fish, known as the ‘Sargassum fish; (Histrio, histrio), as well as the Pugnose Pipefish (Syngnathus pelagicus).

This Sargassum fish species can attain a length of 6 inches, but the majority of the 5 specimens that I obtained were ½ inch with one exception being an inch in length. These critters’ colour, camouflage them so well among the Sargassum and their fins resemble Sargassum fronds.

The Pipefish is a very slender fish, which is closely related to the Seahorse. These fish can obtain a length of 4.5 inches; the specimens we found were about an inch in length.

The most abundant of critter happened to be the very common Sargassum crab (Planes minutes). Sizes ranged from ¼ to ¾ of an inch, in length. The other species of crab collected was the Sargassum Swimming crab (Portunus sayi). These swimming crabs have broad hind limbs which are modified for swimming.

Also abundant in these critter collection of Sargassum weed, were many, very small, shrimps, of a few varying species.