An International Journal Evolution of the Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory MICHAEL J. GREENBERG,WILLIAM F. HERRNKIND, AND FELICIA C. COLEMAN Published by the Marine Environmental Sciences Consortium of Alabama Gulf of Mexico Science, 2010(1–2), pp. 149–163 Evolution of the Florida State University Coastal and Marine Laboratory MICHAEL J. GREENBERG,WILLIAM F. HERRNKIND, AND FELICIA C. COLEMAN SIXTY YEARS OF HISTORY and the toponym Turkey Point Laboratory or, more often, the FSU Marine Laboratory n 1949, just 2 yr after the Florida State College (FSUML) stuck for more than 4 decades. I for Women was transformed into a coeduca- In 2006, Felicia Coleman became the 13th tional institution—The Florida State University director of the Laboratory. She is the first (FSU)—marine science gained a permanent director whose primary workplace is at the foothold on the Tallahassee campus with the laboratory, and the first with an on-site faculty formation of The Oceanographic Institute (OI). to manage. And the laboratory became the FSU This institute—within the College of Arts and Coastal and Marine Laboratory (FSUCML). Sciences—was meant to train graduate students The history of these two laboratories, which in marine science, to provide marine research follows, is narrated primarily by three of the 13 facilities for faculty and students and visiting directors. We have divided the narrative into four investigators, to conduct interdisciplinary basic distinct periods: The Genesis, 15 yr at Alligator research in the northeastern Gulf of Mexico, and Harbor; The Great Move from Alligator Harbor also to conduct applied research directed toward to Turkey Point, 7 yr of change; The Long improving Florida’s fishing industry and devel- Struggle at Turkey Point, 34 yr of intermittent, oping other marine resources. slow increases in activity; and finally, The At first, the OI had three remote marine Awakening, 4 yr of exploding activity. We facilities, but two of them—a station at Mayport describe these periods, revealing how this long on the St. Johns River and another on Mullet Key experiment finally succeeds. at the mouth of Tampa Bay—were closed The backbone of our narrative is a series of sometime after 1955. The remaining facility, vignettes describing the backgrounds and activ- sited on 25 acres of the peninsula that constitutes ities of each of the 13 directors. References to the southern shore of Alligator Harbor, about earlier and later vignettes provides cohesion and 45 miles south of Tallahassee, became FSU’s continuity. But we have also interspersed, within operative marine laboratory (Fig. 1). The struc- the backbone, sketches about the activities of tures constituting this Alligator Harbor Labora- students, faculty, and visiting investigators, and tory were built to accommodate Harold Humm, about educational and outreach programs. In a the first director of the OI. The main laboratory way, then, this narrative is a mosaic. The sketches building consisted of a room provided with are in the first person, except when an individual seawater for research and classes, and a room is deceased, aged, distant, or prefers the third of research cubicles. Other structures included a person omniscient narrator. residence for faculty and visitors, a boathouse– shop, large concrete seawater tanks for keeping THE GENESIS (1949–1964) marine animals, a large pool (21.3 3 15.2 m, 2.1- m deep) constructed in 1954 to keep porpoises The natural surroundings at Alligator Harbor.— for W. N. Kellogg, and a 100-m concrete pier for Alligator Harbor proved an enormously produc- docking small boats. The laboratory’s fleet tive backyard for researchers. It was then and included five power boats (6.7 to 11.6 m) and remains today a narrow, shallow bay (roughly 6.4 several skiffs. 3 1.6 km; depth 1.8 m, except for a central Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, research at basin); the southern flank of the harbor is a thin the Alligator Harbor Laboratory was substantial. peninsula (Alligator Point). No freshwater But in 1966, under the direction of Carl streams flow into the harbor, and rainfall does Oppenheimer, FSU replaced the OI with a not exceed evaporation, so the salinity is the Department of Oceanography; the Alligator same as that in the gulf. A great attraction of the Point Laboratory was closed, and a new facility laboratory at this site was its access by skiff to was built across the harbor, just west of St. Teresa Baymouth Bar (Fig. 1), a sandbar that almost near Turkey Point (Fig. 1). Because Ed Ball, completely closes the mouth of the harbor. At President of the St. Joe Paper Company, donated low tides, Baymouth Bar is exposed—revealing some of the land to FSU, the new facility was an expanse of sand, with seagrass around its edge officially designated as the Edward Ball Marine and on its flanks. It is home to an extraordinarily Laboratory. This name, however, was rarely used, wide diversity of marine invertebrates that were E 2010 by the Marine Environmental Sciences Consortium of Alabama 150 GULF OF MEXICO SCIENCE, 2010, VOL. 28(1–2) Fig. 1. FSU’s successive Marine Labs: locations and offshore worksites: (A) Alligator Harbor Lab (1949–66) viewed southward from the harbor (a). (B) Turkey Point Lab (1966–present), built just west of the Point (b) in greater St. Teresa, is now called FSU Coastal & Marine Lab. Local worksites: (1) Baymouth Bar; (2) Turkey Point Shoal; (3) Lanark Reef; (4) Dog Island; (5) Dog Island Reef; (6) Ochlockonee Bay. Dotted boundary: Alligator Harbor Aquatic Preserve. Distant worksites (lower insert): (7) Apalachicola Bay; (8) Apalachee Bay. GREENBERG ET AL.— EVOLUTION OF THE FSUCML 151 objects of research and teaching at the FSUML naturalists’’; indeed, at least 11 species of marine or on the campus in Tallahassee. Well into the algae, diatoms, and invertebrates were named 1960s, the Point and the Bar were separated by a after him. deep channel, which closed sometime in the 1970s. And at about the same time, the property Samuel L. Meyer.—(Director 1954–1955), Ph.D., at the tip of Alligator Point was donated to the University of Virginia, Charlottesville (1940): Nature Conservancy, which closed it to vehicular Areas of expertise: bryology, academic adminis- and pedestrian traffic. Further below, we will tration. describe some of the more important research Samuel Meyer began to study the physiology of initiatives undertaken in this remarkable loca- mosses while he was a graduate student at the tion. University of Virginia, and continued this line of research for 8 yr at the University of Tennessee, THE DIRECTORS:HUMM,MEYER,FOX,METZ, publishing some 10 papers on the subject. His AND COLLIER work at Tennessee was interrupted by stints in the U.S. Army and at Emory University, and Harold Judson Humm.—(Director 1949–1954), when he returned to Nashville, it was as Professor Ph.D., Duke University (1942): Areas of exper- and Chairman of the Department of Botany— tise: general natural history, algae, marine the same rank and position that he was to hold at microbiology (bacteria and archaea), develop- FSU when he moved there in 1951. ment of marketable products from marine algae. In 1954, when Humm resigned, Meyer became In the course of his career, Harold Judson director of the OI, while the search for a new Humm became—three times, and for three director went forward. He took seriously the different institutions—the first director of a responsibility to ‘‘include all relevant disciplines’’ marine laboratory. The first instance was at in his administration; his staff of 19 faculty Duke, where, after receiving his doctorate in represented 11 departments, seven of them botany, he was appointed Resident Investigator distinctly nonbiological. During his year of service, at the marine laboratory in Beaufort, NC. In Meyer completed the construction of the porpoise 1948, he was appointed the first Resident pools at the Alligator Harbor Laboratory, and he Director of the Duke Marine Laboratory, and a and Robert H. Williams, a Professor of Marine year thereafter (1949) he came to FSU to be the Science, wrote and published a detailed, illustrat- founding director of the newly established OI ed, and historically useful description of the and its Alligator Harbor Laboratory, which was Alligator Harbor Laboratory’s earliest years. soon under construction. Meyer left FSU in 1955 to become Dean at In 1950, Humm reported to a National Central Methodist College (now Central Meth- Research Council committee on work conducted odist University) in Fayette, MO, where he had at the Alligator Harbor Lab: composition of a received his A.B. degree. In 1965, he became checklist of the common species of animals in president of Ohio Northern University, in Ada, 1 Apalachee Bay (Fig. 1), and the distribution of where he oversaw a 12-yr period of striking marine algae in the region; the ecology of academic and physical growth. Widely honored, intertidal annelids on several types of beaches; he became President emeritus in 1977, retired to and a study of the physical properties of the agar Lexington, KY, and died there in 2000. Faculty or agaroids available from several species of and students from Ohio Northern University seaweed that were abundant in the region. These continue to visit the FSUCML today. glutagenous substances are used globally as culture media in medicine and microbiology, Sydney W. Fox—(Director 1955–1961), Ph.D., Cal- and Humm already had a patent on a method ifornia Institute of Technology (1940): Areas of for extracting the gels. By the early 1960s, much expertise: protein chemistry, spontaneous forma- of this work was completed and published. In tion of protein microstructures, origin of life. 1954, Humm left FSU precipitously, and re- Fox studied chemistry at the University of turned to Duke.