After stepping down from the helm at the Bermuda Institute for Ocean Sciences, Anthony Knap is heading off tonight for friends and family in the UK and looking forward to new ventures in the commercial fields.Looking back on the institute he first saw after a boating injury landed him in Bermuda in 1976, the outgoing BIOS President said: “I saw it change from a tiny place to a world leader.”He could have gone to marine research at Bristol University, or work at the prestigious Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution but when Dr Knap was sent an ad from the science magazine Nature, he elected to sign on at “the Bio Station”.“It was a one-year contract to work on the tar problem in Bermuda,” he said. “I stayed.”Nearly 35 years later, the now-retired BIOS president was reluctant to elaborate on his new business plans, but said it would deal with the intersection of insurance and climate change.“Creating some financial products that would help mitigate changes in climate is something I’d like to get involved in,” he said. “And I have one or two friends who are like-minded.”From its relatively sleepy origins, BIOS has acquired a globally-respected name in the charting the changing conditions of the planet.Dr Knap counts BIOS’s long-term time series station (at Hydrostation S), and the 23-year-old Bermuda Atlantic Time Series oceanographic study, as landmarks in the institute’s legacy.“I liken BIOS and these programmes to a barometer of climate change,” he said.”Its long-term measurement of carbon dioxide levels and the acidification of the ocean will hopefully continue long into the future.”The institute’s courting of students, faculty and interns is another point of pride.“One of the things I find amazing is how its educational programmes changed over time,” he recalled. “More and more people will be coming to Bermuda to get a grounding in ocean sciences. The growth in educational programmes and the ability to attract first-rate faculty to Bermuda has really been remarkable. We’ve taken it to a great level and it can only go up.”Asked what he had found most amazing in his time there, Dr Knap recalled a close encounter with a giant manta ray, out by the open ocean hydrostation.“We were hanging bottles on the wire out there, and this huge shadow came under the ship,” he said. “And it hung out there. We jumped into the water and swam with it. There were remoras trying to come off the manta and onto us.”Grappling with a string of sampling bottles out at sea in 1979 attracted the interest of a hammerhead shark which circled the swimmers.“That was something pretty different,” he said.However, between a girlfriend and family in the UK, and the pressing travel demands of his job, Dr Knap eventually decided it was time for a change.“The amount of travel required was huge,” he said. “I was on the move all the time. I looked at my travel for next year and I had Hawaii, Tokyo and Singapore all different trips. It was time to do something else.”Exploring his commercial interests would have been at odds with his position as director and president of the organisation, he added.“It was great,” Dr Knap said, “but it’s also important to move on and get some new blood into the organisation.”Although he will start calling London home after he arrives tomorrow, Dr Knap expects to rack up more travel.“I’ll zip back and forth from there to here and see what happens,” he said. “Hopefully it will involve a bit of both places.”