By Jim Harvey (20 May 2016)

So as I have been preparing these blogs, I have been noting other marine labs and entities that also were celebrating 50 years of existence. It became obvious that many other marine labs originated at about the same time that Moss Landing Marine Laboratories began. So I went to the NAML site. MLML is a member of the National Association of  Marine Labs, and I went to as many of the listed websites as I could to determine the time they began. I did not include the state or federal labs (e.g. NOAA, EPA, CDFW, etc.) in this discussion. Here is a graph of the results (see list at end of blog):

 

What you see is that the first marine lab in the United States (at least for the ones that are members of NAML) was the Marine Biology Laboratory, started in 1888. MBL is located in Woods Hole Massachusetts.

Some other notable marine labs that were established at the onset were: Hopkins Marine Station (1892), Friday Harbor Laboratories (1903), Scripps Institute of Oceanography (1905), and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (1930). MLML is the second oldest marine lab on Monterey Bay.

You also will  notice from the graph that about the time MLML started there was an explosion in the number of marine labs. In fact, of the 51 marine labs I investigated 17 (33%) were started in the decade of 1960 to 1969.  The other marine lab that began in 1966 when MLML was formed was Shoals Marine Laboratory that serves Cornell and the University of New Hampshire. You might also notice from the table at the end of the blog that we are the median lab (25 labs started before us, 25 after us), so we are not your "average" lab.

Many other things began around 1966, 50 years ago, and I have compiled a few of interest:

1. National Sea Grant

 

2. Charlie Brown Christmas

 

3. Grateful Dead (apparently first played as Grateful Dead in San Jose, CA)

 

4. Superbowl

 

5. VANS

 

6. Penthouse magazine

(I don't think I should have a picture here)

 

7. Star Trek

 

So MLML began when many other marine labs began, and when a number of other iconic institutions showed up.

Let me know what I missed.

 

 

List of the 51 marine labs I used to determine a timeline.

	INSTITUTION	YEAR	UNIVERSITY
1	Marine Biology Laboratory	1888
2	Hopkins Marine Station	1892	Stanford University
3	Marine Science Institute	1900	University of Texas
4	Friday Harbor Laboratories	1903	University of Washington
5	Scripps Institute of Oceanography	1905	University of California, San Diego
6	Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology	1912	University of Hawaii
7	Chesapeake Biological Laboratory	1925	University of Maryland
8	Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution	1930
9	Oregon Institute of Marine Biology	1931	University of Oregon
10	Bermuda Institute of Ocean Sciences	1932
11	Duke University Marine Lab	1938	Duke University
12	Virginia Institute of Marine Science	1940	William and Mary
13	Rosensteil School of Marine and Atmospheric Science	1943	University of Miami
14	Gulf Coast Research Lab	1947	University of Southern Mississippi
15	Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory	1949	Florida State University
16	Grice Marine Laboratory	1955	College of Charleston
17	Mote Marine Lab	1955
18	Bodega Marine Laboratory	1960	University of California, Davis
19	Dauphin Island Sea Lab	1963	Alabama's Marine Science Institution
20	Hubbs SeaWorld	1963
21	Darling Marine Center	1965	University of Maine
22	Telonicker Marine Lab	1965	Humboldt State University
23	Hatfield Marine Science Center	1965	Oregon State University
24	Wrigely Marine Science Center	1965	University of Southern California
25	Shoals Marine Laboratory	1966	Cornell and University of New Hampshire
26	Moss Landing Marine Laboratories	1966	California State Universities
27	Skidway Institution of Oceanography	1967	University of Georgia
28	Chincoteague Bay Field Station	1968
29	Smithsonian Marine Station at Fort Pierce	1969
30	Baruch Marine Field Lab	1969	University of South Carolina
31	Center for Marine Science	1970	University of North Carolina Wilmington
32	Marine Laboratory	1970	University of Guam
33	Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution	1971	Florida Atlantic University
34	Kewalo Marine Laboratory	1972	University of Hawaii at Manoa
35	Coastal Studies Lab	1973	University of Texas Rio Grand Valley
36	Bigelow Laboratory of Ocean Sciences	1974
37	Whitney Lab for Marine Bioscience	1974	University of Florida
38	Long Marine Lab	1976	University of California, Santa Cruz
39	Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies	1978	San Francisco State University
40	Louisiana University Marine Consortium	1979
41	Coastal Studies Center	1981	Bowden College
42	Keys Marine Lab	1983
43	Blakely Island Field Station	1984	Seattle Pacific University
44	Richard B. Gump South Pacific Research Station	1985	University of California, Berkeley
45	Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute	1987
46	Marine Laboratory	1997	Roger Williams University
47	Alaska Sealife Center	1998
48	Cal Poly Center for Coastal Marine Sciences	2001	California Polytechnic State University
49	Nantucket Field Station	2004	University of Massachusetts
50	Vester Field Station	2007	Florida Gulf Coast University
51	Sitka Sound Science Center	2007