Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences

Bigelow Laboratory Receives $4.45 Million for Blue Biotechnology

The Laboratory is proud to announce that it has received a $4.45 million award from the Maine Technology Asset Fund for the establishment of the Bigelow Center for Blue Biotechnology. The new center will provide a commercialization gateway for advanced ocean research, catalyzing significant economic growth in mid-coast Maine by harnessing the potential of the ocean’s microbial ecosystems to benefit society.

Bigelow Research Paper Highlighted as Editors' Choice in Science Magazine

Bigelow scientist Dr. Richard Wahle, is the lead author of a research paper that has been selected as the Editors' Choice for ecology in the March 13, 2009 issue of Science (Volume 323, Issue 5920). The paper "Distinguishing Disease Impacts from Larval Supply Effects in a Lobster Fishery Collapse" was published in the journal Marine Ecology Progress Series in February 2009 and was co-authored by Mark Gibson from the Rhode Island Division of Fish and Wildlife and Michael Fogarty of the National Marine Fisheries Service Northeast Fisheries Science Center. The paper provides evidence that the collapse of a large sector of the southern New England lobster fishery over the past decade was related sharp declines in the supply of water-born lobster larvae to coastal populations a few years prior to the onset of the shell disease that is decimating adult lobsters there. The study brings us one step closer to understanding  fisheries in the context of the ecosystems in which they are embedded, and illustrates how trends in the lobster populations depend on mechanisms at work in the water column during a lobster's free-floating larval stage, as well as those that affect survival during its remaining life on the seabed. Photo of larval lobster courtesy of New England Aquarium.

News

• Adapt or Perish: July 7 Café Scientifique Addresses Evolution and Adaptation in Nature
  

  Bigelow's Dr. David  McClellan will lead a discussion titled “Adapt or Perish: Studying Nature’s Inexorable Imperative” at the Laboratory’s July 7 Café Scientifique gathering from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. at The Opera House on Townsend Avenue in Boothbay Harbor.

  
  

  - 6/29/2009
• June 30 Café Scientifique Discussion Focuses on the Antarctic's Melting Icebergs
  Bigelow Laboratory's ocean biogeochemist Dr. Benjamin Twining will lead a discussion about “Global warming and the proliferation of icebergs: floating estuaries in the Southern Ocean” at the June 30 Café Scientifique gathering from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m. at The Opera House on Townsend Avenue in Boothbay Harbor.
  - 6/22/2009
• Café Scientifique Series Begins Its Seventh Summer Season with Coral Reef Climate Research
  

  Dr. Graham Shimmield will launch the Laboratory’s seventh summer Café Scientifique season at 6 p.m. on Tuesday, June 23, with a conversation about “The Riddle of the Reefs: Using Massive Corals to Decipher the History of El Nino Events in the Equatorial Pacific.”

  - 6/17/2009

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