NOAA FISHERIES HOLDS OPEN HOUSE AT TED STEVENS MARINE RESEARCH INSTITUTE

NOAA Fisheries Service invites the public to an open house at the new Ted Stevens Marine Research Institute at Lena Point in Juneau, Alaska from 3:30 to 7 p.m. on Aug. 21, 2007. Tours of the facility start from the main lobby.

“We are proud of the new marine research facility, and we’re inviting everyone to come have a look,” said Doug DeMaster, director of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center. “This facility will bolster marine science in Alaska, and will aid efforts to keep Alaska’s ocean ecosystems strong and productive. Getting to where we are today was a long, broad-based effort of federal, state, local, university and private interests. We’re taking August 21 to recognize the success of all our efforts.”

The opening of the institute is the culmination of a 15-year effort to create Alaska’s largest fisheries research facility. The new 69,000 square foot, two-story building will enable scientists to expand research into Alaskan fisheries and meet the growing information needs of the NOAA Fisheries Service ecosystem approach to managing fisheries. The center provides the conference facilities, laboratory space and work space needed to bring together scientists from the many specialties that collaborate to understand and manage Alaska’s fisheries.

What sets the new facility apart from past facilities is its laboratories, which are larger, safer and provide increased scientific capabilities. In addition to chemistry, genetics, and biology laboratories, there is a large wet lab, a necropsy room equipped to handle small marine mammals, large fish and sharks, an ichthyology laboratory for sorting and identification of specimens, two large walk-in freezers, and a large day room for contractors and other project personnel. The wet lab will have just under 2,000 square feet of enclosed space, 4,000 square feet of outdoor space, overhead electric power access, and can receive 1,200 gallons per minute of filtered sea water.

"We congratulate NOAA Fisheries Service on the completion of its building, and look forward to the day when both the federal and university marine research facilities stand on Lena Point, where the best minds in Alaska marine research can exchange ideas and leverage one another’s work for the better understanding of the oceans and of Alaska’s ecosystems,” said Denis Wiesenburg, dean of the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

The University of Alaska Fairbanks has started construction of a 30,600 square foot, $26.5 million sister teaching and research facility at Lena Point, which is designed to hold 13 faculty, 10 research assistants and 45 students. The university building will be complete in fall 2008.

NOAA and Congressional leaders are meeting just ahead of the Aug. 21 open house. Sen. Ted Stevens, Bill Hogarth, NOAA Fisheries Service director, and many of the people responsible for supporting and helping build the new Ted Stevens Marine Research Institute plan to attend the meeting.

NOAA Fisheries Service scientists and staff began moving into the new facility shortly after receiving the keys on May 1, 2007. All furniture and equipment have been installed, however full operations will not be realized until about mid-August, since many of the scientists are in the field gathering data during the summer.

The Ted Stevens Marine Research Institute in Juneau is part of the Alaska Fisheries Science Center, with facilities and field stations in Anchorage in downtown and Auke Bay in Juneau, in Kodiak, in Little Port Walter and in the Pribilof Islands, plus facilities at Sand Point in Seattle, Wash. and in Newport, Ore.

Livingstone Slone, Inc. of Anchorage, Southeast Earthmovers, Inc. of Sitka, and J.E. Dunn Construction of Portland were the main architects and construction companies for the building.

NOAA Fisheries Service is dedicated to protecting and preserving our nation’s living marine resources through scientific research, management, enforcement, and the conservation of marine mammals and other protected marine species and their habitat. To learn more about NOAA Fisheries in Alaska, please visit our Web sites at http://www.fakr.noaa.gov or at http://www.afsc.noaa.gov

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, an agency of the U.S. Commerce Department, is celebrating 200 years of science and service to the nation. From the establishment of the Survey of the Coast in 1807 by Thomas Jefferson to the formation of the Weather Bureau and the Commission of Fish and Fisheries in the 1870s, much of America's scientific heritage is rooted in NOAA.

NOAA is dedicated to enhancing economic security and national safety through the prediction and research of weather and climate-related events and information service delivery for transportation, and by providing environmental stewardship of our nation's coastal and marine resources. Through the emerging Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS), NOAA is working with its federal partners, more than 70 countries and the European Commission to develop a global monitoring network that is as integrated as the planet it observes, predicts and protects.