Federal, state and academic institutions partner in state-of-the-art marine lab facility

Fact or fiction? Charleston has a state-of-the-art facility that combines federal, state and academic minds and dollars, is dedicated to saving oceans and mankind and is training the next generation to cooperate and share.

Fact! This apparent utopia is the Hollings Marine Laboratory at Fort Johnson. A partnership between the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the College of Charleston, MUSC and the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, the lab is a mixture of federal, state and academic institutions.

Housing more than 100 researchers, the facility’s fellows, students and staff focus on an interdisciplinary approach to studying the relationships between organisms and their marine environment, with applications for aquaculture, human health and disease. The mission of HML is to sustain, protect and restore coastal ecosystems by applying science and biotechnology. Current research at HML includes environmental chemistry, ecotoxicology, marine genomics, biological and chemical oceanography, physiology of marine organisms, marine environmental specimen banking, and aquaculture.

“We started planning this back in 1987,” says Dr. Paul Sandifer, senior scientist for HML. The principal funding for the project is federal money from the NOAA and NIST budgets. DNR made available all of the land at no cost and granted a 50-year lease to the federal government. The actual building is owned and operated by NOAA, although each institution pays the cost of any of its staff, personnel and research supplies.

“There are all different kinds of scientists dealing with various issues facing society on the coast,” says Dr. Fred Holland, director of the HML. “None of the academic institutions can afford to have that talent, but when we work together, we make use of each other’s brainpower.”

The impressive array of technology and scientific equipment is also a benefit of the unique partnership. “NOAA has a robot that does in a matter of minutes what it would take a person several days to finish,” says Holland. “DNR would never get it. College of Charleston and MUSC couldn’t afford it. It provides greater flexibility.”

Students of each of the local academic institutions—and in some cases, USC, Clemson and UGA as well—benefit from the enterprise.

“The next generation of scientists sees the team of researchers from DNR, MUSC and from NOAA literally working in the same lab. If they go into a federal agency career, or a career at DNR or an academic institution, they will have experienced what it is like working in very different organizational structures, but still working together,” explains Holland. “It gives them a much broader perspective than if they got a traditional biology degree at one institution. Students are more likely to find a job and are more likely to succeed at it.”

The Hollings Marine Lab also gives South Carolina an edge when competing for funding or people. “In South Carolina, we don’t have the option of having fiefdoms. We’re not as competitive on the national level,” says Sandifer. “We don’t have the academic clout. By linking together, we have a better chance of competitive success than if each institution would go on its own. For example, with our tidal creeks or genomics studies, there is not another place in this country with the equipment, the level of expertise and the problems to apply that technology to in the country.”

Now that the building is operational, the new challenge for the partnership is making the marriage work. One issue is potential discrepancy in pay and benefits between partners. “Each institution has different pay scales, and we don’t want to dictate to MUSC or the College of Charleston how much they pay their technicians. We also don’t want to see DNR technicians saying they can get a better deal if they walk across the hall and work for MUSC. It’s important that no institution feels it has been left out or unfairly treated,” says Holland.

Another issue that is a product of their novel inter-disciplinary approach is safety. “We have students working at night by themselves, unsupervised,” Holland adds. “The academic model is one extreme—you have people working all the time with no set hours. NOAA is the other extreme. We want to encourage people to be here when they need to and we want to support them, but it’s a different environment after 9-11. We’re a federal installation, and it requires different security. Federal rules trump everyone else’s.”

Dr. Lou Burnett, a scientist with the College of Charleston, says his main concern is with maximizing the relationship between scientists and research. “We are now moving into another phase. We need to institutionalize this partnership by finding ways to communicate what the principal scientists are doing. We have to figure out more things scientists have in common.”

Part of the mission for the lab’s research is to lead to new biotech products, including security, pollution, environmental protection and pharmaceuticals. Small businesses, such as shrimp farmers, have already shown an interest in investing in the lab’s research.

“One project is looking at how aquaculture can meet the demand for human consumption. Our research goal is to see how we can take management actions to make things better in industry. Then we monitor the environment to see if our action made it better,” says Sandifer. “We are studying how man’s activities affect the quality of the oceans, and what things man does to the environment that comes back to affect human health. It’s a big step. Almost nobody else comes full circle.”