Northeastern’s Marine Science Center is taking advantage of its coastal location near Boston and major fisheries to rebuild its ecology program.
Jennifer Cutraro
Numerous marine science labs dot the shores of the U.S. eastern seaboard, but only one stands on the former site of a U.S. Army missile launcher.
Northeastern University’s Marine Science Center (MSC) is situated at the tip of Nahant (about 13 miles north of Boston), which juts out onto Massachusetts Bay—a strategic spot for defense during the Cold War and, now, for studying marine ecology.
Evidence of the past abounds at the MSC; labs and offices are located in converted hangar-sized bunkers and barracks. But the center has struggled to figure out what kind of research institution it wants to be in the future. In the mid-1990s, its staff and research budget shrank, but it’s now trying to beef up its basic research program. The MSC hired two young researchers from top labs around the world in the last year with expertise in marine molecular ecology and community ecology. It hopes to hire more.
The Marine Science Center of Northeastern University is finding that its location on Massachusetts Bay will be crucial for its future. (Credit: Ted Maney, MSC)
The main person behind this small hiring spree is Geoff Trussell, a community ecologist who joined the MSC in 2002. At that time, the center had only two graduate students and not a single postdoctoral researcher. Since then, Trussell has worked to bring new faculty to Nahant. He says he wants to see the MSC grow and become a leader in marine science, conservation, management, and policy.
“Here we are sitting on near-pristine habitat a stone’s throw away from some of the world’s best universities,” says Trussell. “That proximity is important for getting a clear understanding of urban impacts on marine ecosystems.”
Prime real estate
Indeed, the MSC’s location was a draw for the new recruits. “It’s ideal to be so close to Boston, where I have access to new genetic technologies,” says Steve Vollmer, a marine molecular ecologist and one of the center’s two new faculty members. “Here, I can go out to the rocks, collect snails, run my genetics work, and have results back in a day.” Northeastern is the only university in the Boston area with a marine lab on the coast.
Vollmer came to the MSC from a postdoctoral position at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. There, he studied how coral moves between reefs—information that conservation biologists need to help them design effective marine reserves. At the MSC, Vollmer will continue related work on coral diseases but he’ll also turn his attention to studying patterns of evolution in local snails, complementing Trussell’s research on how snails and other species respond to chemical cues from predators.
Future plans
In the long term, the center’s leaders want to focus on more applied ecology research, a direction supported by the university’s president, Joseph Aoun, says Northeastern biology department chair Fred Davis. “Our current president is trying to emphasize meeting societal needs like resource management through basic research,” he says.
Located so close to major fisheries, the MSC is well positioned to address topics relevant to the local economy, such as the impact of invasive organisms on regional fisheries, Trussell adds. The new hires are a step in this direction, but before the center can explore those questions, it will need more funding from Northeastern to hire, for example, a fisheries biologist and nutrient chemist.
The MSC is headed in the right direction, says Kevin Eckelbarger, director of the University of Maine’s Darling Marine Center. With the center’s recent hiring, he’s optimistic about its future. “Who knows where it will be in another 15 years?”