Marine Lab Directors Join Forces For More Coordination, Respect

Together, the nation's marine lab directors hope to shape their futures and keep their institutes and coastal sciences thriving WASHINGTON--The directors of the nation's marine labs are banding together to keep their institutions afloat. Next month, as soon as the trustee ballots are in, Harlyn Halvorson will begin his tenure as the first president of the National Association of Marine Laboratories (NAML). This loosely knit network of directors and administrators intends to prove that, when it comes to funding, promotion, and perhaps even to science itself, two labs - or more - are better than one. "There will be more cooperation on programming and more of an effort to speak with one voice," says Halvorson, director of the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass. "And that voice will be a stronger voice." Halvorson believes that such a voice is needed, in these days of strapped budgets and competition among disciplines, if marine labs are to receive the support they believe they deserve. Although a large proportion of the U.S. population lives in coastal areas and depends on their resources, it's the deep-water oceanographers who tend to grab headlines as well as the attention of policymakers. "We've got to press for a greater interest in and development of facilities to permit us to understand our coastal environment," says founding member John D. Costlow, professor of zoology at Duke University Marine Laboratory in Beauford, N.C. "We still don't make much of an effort to see what's in our territorial waters; instead, we're out looking at the hole in the ozone." The new association will also help marine scientists deal with common problems. Marine labs face many issues that are foreign to their parent institutions. They have boats to maintain and operate; diving codes to abide by; buildings and facilities that are bombarded by salt, wind, and bad weather; and, often, no easy access to main campus libraries or computers. "One of our biggest problems is isolation," says Robert Jones, director of the Marine Sciences Institute at the University of Texas, Austin. That isolation can be disastrous. A decade ago, the nation's marine laboratories were in disarray. Parent institutions often refused to cover all of a lab's expenses or make needed renovations to facilities because many of the lab's scientists and students come from other institutions. Yet the cost of keeping up with the latest technology was too high to pass along to those visitors. Consequently, labs could not afford to buy new equipment, and facilities became outdated. And marine researchers were falling behind their peers in the incorporation of molecular approaches into their investigations. To reverse that trend, a group of lab directors compiled a list of needs, then persuaded the National Science Foundation that saving these facilities was a national priority. Through a special program begun in 1981, between 18 and 27 labs a year got a piece of the $5 million made available over the program's five-year span. That amount was only one fifth of what had been requested, and no grant could be for more than $100,000. Nevertheless, the awards made a difference. "We got equipment that we could never have afforded or even justified ourselves," says Costlow. That program expired in 1986. But the needs did not disappear. Now marine laboratories compete with biological field stations for a $1.5-million-a-year pot that requires matching funds. And marine scientists aren't happy about the new rules. "Probably it's far better for these [marine labs and field stations] not to be connected to each other," says James Clegg, director of the Bodega Marine Laboratory in Bodega Bay, Calif. Clegg, who is president-elect of the new association, hopes that NAML eventually will convince NSF and other federal agencies to set up programs especially for marine labs. "There's a lot of institutions that cannot come up with a one-to-one match," notes Ken Tenore, head of the Chesapeake Biological Laboratory in Maryland. "Under the present rules, they are cut out." Clegg believes the first step toward influencing NSF is for the association to gain credibility in the field. To do that, he says, the association must grow beyond its initial 40 members and sign up institutions from the Great Lakes as well as the marine states. But NAML is unlikely to appeal to the nation's largest oceanographic institutions, such as the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the marine centers at the Universities of Rhode Island or Miami. Those sites, in which marine biology contributes only a small part of the overall research, have their own 10-member association, the Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI). And JOI has clout: its members spend about 85% of all the U.S. money going to ocean sciences. But even as a small voice, NAML can play a big role in sharing information among the various labs. At one planning meeting, directors learned more about the new NIH initiative to encourage the use of marine organisms to study disease. At another, a talk by a lawyer prompted Clegg to re-evaluate potential liability risks at his Bodega Bay lab. More signs were posted, and nonslip flooring was installed. At the Chesapeake lab, Tenore is trying out new accounting software recommended by a colleague. Several NAML members predict that the group will improve marine education, either by eliminating duplicate course offerings or by developing joint programs that allow students to take courses at several NAML facilities. But not everyone sees the need for a national group. "A number of us would feel better having several regional organizations," says Jones. The Southeastern Association of Marine Laboratories, for example, manages to hold meetings twice a year, alternating between the East and Gulf Coasts and moving from lab to lab. Directors still exchange information, and smaller laboratories, such as Savannah (Ga.) State College's Marine Biology Program, find the regional groups more useful than a national group. "[NAML] goes beyond the scope of our programs," says Matthew Gilligan, associate professor of marine biology at Savannah State. "There's no money in our budget for travel," he says, nor for NAML's estimated $350 annual membership. Another possible sticking point for NAML is the extent of coordination within the field. Some members, like Duke's Costlow, would like to see the 70 or so labs combine to form a national marine laboratory system, which would set priorities on resources and equipment. "It's ridiculous to think that everyone should have an electron microscope, etc.," he says. "We should identify some on each coast, and put major support into those facilities." Without such a coordinated effort, Costlow warns, larger labs will prosper and smaller labs will fail. "It will be the same old story of them that has, gets more," he says. That fallout has already started. Johns Hopkins University is phasing out over three years the Chesapeake Bay Institute in Shady Side, Md. Its director, James Ebert, said it would take much more than the lab's annual $2.8 million to keep the lab in the forefront of research, even though its 40-person facility generated 80% of the lab's budget through grants. But even Costlow says that a centralized approach may be an idea whose time has not yet come. "The marine biological community is much larger and much more diverse [than the oceanographic community]," says Costlow. "They have never really considered it, even though everyone knows they should."

Marine Lab Directors Join Forces For More Coordination, Respect

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