Facilities

Marine Lab

The Marine Lab is custom-designed to meet the needs of the marine biology program. The facility has an 18,000 gal recirculating seawater system which supplies tanks in both indoor and semi-enclosed outdoor spaces with a constant supply of clean water at local environmental temperatures. The lab have the ability to keep locally collected live marine animals (algae, invertebrates, and fishes) for classroom and research purposes.

The Marine Lab also has an 80 sq. ft. walk-in environmental chamber that can be chilled to 5°C if needed. The indoor part of the facility is used for classroom demonstrations and diverse research projects. The outdoor facility is primarily used for research, and houses all the life support equipment, including chillers, protein skimmers, cartridge filters and biological filters, and large tanks and tank racks.

Shark Lab

The Shark Lab has a semi-wet lab with 4 work stations for students and worktop space for field research gear preparation and minor dry laboratory research. The lab has a 500 gal. (closed-system) polyurethane tank (5' diameter) tank in the lab for holding animals for research. There is "on-demand" seawater outlets and compressed air throughout the lab space, as well as a separate dry lab space housing lab computers, dissection scope and electronics.

The Shark Lab has immediate access to the 1200 sq. ft. semi-enclosed outdoor tank bay, which has 10,000 gal recirculating system including chillers, protein skimmers, and cartridge filters. The lab has one 1200 gal (8' diameter), one 900 gal (7' diameter), and two 500 gal (5' diameter) polyurethane tanks for holding gamefishes, sharks, skates and rays. Additional tank space is available for experiments.

Dive Locker

The Department of Biological Sciences owns and maintains a dive locker with a scuba compressor and fill station.