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Facility

The Laboratory is located on 5 hectares (11 acres) of land on St. Andrew Bay. The major facilities consist of a main building (hosting offices and labs, library, wet lab, storage areas, and conference room), and a boat basin with two docks, boat ramp and boat house, aquaculture buildings, and gear storage building. A National Weather Service communication tower and an office of the National Marine Fisheries Service Habitat Conservation Division are also located on the property.

Equipment

The Panama City Laboratory uses state of the art equipment in both laboratory and field. In addition to typical analytical tools such as microscopes and balances, our researchers use advanced equipment such as electronic instruments for determining salinity, temperature, light transmission, dissolved oxygen, and depth; optical pattern recognition systems for fish age and growth; geographic information systems for analysis of satellite imagery and other spatial data; acoustic and satellite fish tags; and remotely operated vehicles and underwater video cameras.

The Laboratory has a walk-in refrigerator and freezer as well as chemical supplies for the preservation of specimens. Computers and relevant software figure very highly in laboratory and at sea operations. We also utilize floating cages, anchored pens, and a 30,000 gallon temperature-controlled recirculating seawater system for holding live specimens and conducting experiments.

The Laboratory uses SCUBA gear and a research fleet consisting of a variety of boats, ranging in size from 13' to 36' for sampling inshore and offshore. Sampling gear includes handlines, longlines, gill nets, seine nets, plankton collecting nets, trawls, traps, underwater video, remotely operated vehicle, and tagging equipment. Laboratory researchers have access to the NOAA fisheries research vessels Oregon II and Gordon Gunter, berthed in Pascagoula, Mississippi, for at-sea sampling as well as all NOAA ships on the Eastern seaboard on an as-needed basis.