A research project using a shipping vessel to collect environmental information about the Atlantic has been given a funding boost to expand its breadth.

The Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences revealed in its Currents newsletter that a grant from the Cawthorn Innovation Fund has been awarded for a proposal to enhance research carried out on board the CMV Oleander.

The cargo ship, which travels weekly between Bermuda and Port Elizabeth, New Jersey, has served as a volunteer research vessel since the 1970s, collecting environmental data during its voyages.

Researcher Tim Noyes, with principal investigators Steve Saul and Magdalena Andres, proposed enhancing its research capabilities to capture environmental DNA, giving scientists a glimpse of the life that inhabits the area.

The newsletter said: “With Dr Noyes as this year’s Cawthorn recipient, he explains how the Cawthorn Innovation Fund has enabled him to capitalise on the CMV Oleander platform by adding biological measurements and increasing the scientific capacity of the existing Oleander project.

“Various instrumentation, such as expendable bathythermographs, which are probes that take temperature profiles down to a maximum of 900 metres, and acoustic doppler current profilers, which are mounted to the ship to measure water velocity, are utilised to collect important datasets.

“This enables scientists to look at temperature transport from south to north, for example, to assess if the Gulf Stream is slowing down or shifting and deduce the impact of any changes globally.”

The newsletter said that together, the data collected would identify the genetic fingerprints or organisms that had been near the ship and where the particles came from.

Dr Noyes said: “Once it’s taken a sample, it also pumps DNA preservatives into the filter, so you don’t have to worry about the further breakdown of the DNA to the point where we can’t do anything with it.

“The idea was that we would then pair the sampling with the expendable bathythermographs to get the definite temperature, as well as the flow-through temperature data and the current data from the ADCPs and put it all together and see what it does.”

The newsletter said it would take about four months to build the eDNA sampler before it is sent to Bermuda, where it will be tested before being installed on the Oleander.