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Stony Brook University, including its Southampton campus, is the new home of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts.
In a press conference at the Marine Science Center at Stony Brook Southampton on Friday morning, university officials unveiled their plan to house the institute, which was first established as the Pew Institute for Ocean Science at the University of Miami in 2003. The Pew Charitable Trusts are contributing an initial $4 million for the institute and are expected to provide ongoing support.
“We want to investigate and pursue solutions to the most complex problems facing the waters in New York State,” Stony Brook University President Shirley Strum Kenny said at the event.
The institute will be based at both Stony Brook’s main campus and at Stony Brook Southampton, where it will be part of the Marine Science Center. Stony Brook Southampton recently received $6.9 million in state funding, enabling the school to double the size of the existing Marine Science Center and add a state-of-the-art wet lab to keep marine animals alive.
David Conover, the dean of the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at the college, said that ground will be broken on the new center in fall 2009, and the project should be complete by the following fall.
Dr. Ellen Pikitch, a professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Science at Stony Brook’s main campus, will be the executive director of the institute, which will allow graduate students and professional researchers to study the most pressing issues facing the ocean today.
“The ocean is enormously important to us all,” Dr. Pikitch said at the event. “Whether we realize it or not, the quality of our lives depends on our ocean.”
Dr. Pikitch hopes to focus first on creating a task force to protect forager fish, small schooling fish like anchovies, sardines and menhaden, which have begun to be over-fished commercially for use in animal feed and fish oil supplements. She estimated that 40 percent of the global fish catch now comprises these small fish. That study is being funded by the Lenfest Foundation.
Dr. Pikitch said that the institute will also address the over-fishing of sharks and Beluga sturgeons.
She said that a century ago, sturgeons were so commonly caught in the waters off New York that they became known as “Albany beef,” and their caviar was served instead of peanuts in bars throughout the state. While it was housed at the University of Miami, the institute had been a leader in the movement to place the Beluga sturgeon on the U.S. Endangered Species List and had helped enact a worldwide ban on Beluga caviar in 2006.
The institute also helped create protections for great white sharks, whose fins are in demand for shark fin soup, as their populations have plummeted by 90 percent. The institute also developed forensic techniques used to prosecute the illegal sale of sharks and their fins.
Dr. Pikitch also said that she hopes the institute will research the factors that lead to the bleaching of coral reefs. Though many once active reefs have become barren due to increased water temperatures on account of global warming, Dr. Pikitch said that some species of coral seem more resilient to temperature change and need to be studied further. Other local issues she hopes to address include algae blooms, beach closings and “dead zones” where marine life cannot grow due to human pollution.
She said that while fisheries throughout the world may face “a gathering wave” of extinctions, she said that it is not too late to save many species through global partnerships focused on workable solutions to fishery issues.
Dr. Pikitch begins work at the institute on September 1 and hopes to have more researchers on staff within months.
“Ocean conservation really brings us close to home,” said State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr., a Southampton College alumnus who reminded the crowd that the Marine Science Center is nearby to three national estuaries—the Peconic Bay Estuary, the Long Island Sound and the New York-New Jersey Harbor. He also noted that Shinnecock and Montauk are the two biggest fishing ports in New York State.
“Those of us who attended this college knew this place was a diamond in the rough,” he said, adding that he’d always hoped that the college could receive the kind of funding necessary to prosper when it was owned by Long Island University.
U.S. Representative Tim Bishop, the former provost of Southampton College, said that he hopes the institute will give lawmakers the scientific background necessary to make informed decisions when drafting laws that affect the environment and commercial and recreational fishermen.
Right now, he said, “it’s hard to determine whether the judgments we’re making are based on good science.”
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