A Big Step for Marine Science Research
 Kate Maier
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(8/27/2008) The marine science program at Stony Brook Southampton received another mega-boost on Friday, when officials announced the establishment of the Institute for Ocean Conservation Science, an adjunct to the university’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, which it hopes will become a world-renowned research center in the near future.
The Pew Charitable Trusts, which helped to fund the institute when it started at the University of Miami in 2003, has donated $4 million to get the ball rolling, with other as-of-yet undisclosed amounts of cash set to start pouring in from other organizations, including the Lenfest Ocean Program. Additionally, New York State has earmarked $6.9 million in this year’s budget to build a new marine science research center that will house the program.
Ellen K. Pikitch, a professor at Stony Brook’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, has been named executive director of the institute. As director of the program in Florida, she successfully led research on coral reef habitat preservation through her Reefs of Hope project and a forensic DNA-mapping technique that has allowed enforcement officials around the world to detect and prosecute poachers of endangered shark species.
Her first mission at Stony Brook Southampton will be to assemble and lead the Lenfest Forage Fish Task Force, an international team of experts who will address the depletion of forage fish such as anchovies and sardines. The tiny fishes are an integral part of the oceanic food web, and have been dangerously overfished in recent years because they are used in livestock feed and in human fish-oil supplements.
Dr. Pikitch’s hope is to “focus on and identify workable solutions” to confront what she calls a “state of emergency” in ocean extinctions and food web depletions. “I believe it’s definitely not too late to serve the largest, most rich biological space on Earth,” she said on Friday.
After the pomp and circumstance at the well-attended media show, where Shirley Strum Kenny, the president of Stony Brook University, and Representative Tim Bishop and Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele Jr. lauded the new program, a few seaworthy celebrants were invited for a boat ride on the Paumanok, one of the university’s research vessels.
Florian Koch, a Ph.D. student studying marine science at Stony Brook, talked about his experiences on the campus and shed some light on what exactly it is that the students and faculty there are doing. Although he knew there was a “big announcement” slated for Friday, he was still “processing” what it all meant by the time the engines on the Paumanok started.
“This is news to me as well, and the fact that we’re out here to begin with is amazing,” he said in an interview on the upper deck of the boat.
Mr. Koch graduated from Long Island University’s marine science program in 2001 and took off for California to pursue his master’s degree at San Francisco State University.
He had kept in contact with Chris Gobler, a professor and mentor at the college whose specialty is brown tide research. As soon as Mr. Gobler called to tell his former student that the state university system had taken over the since- defunct college, Mr. Koch started planning his move back east. Now he is working side-by-side with his mentor, who recently came up with a genome for brown tide and is doing field research at places like Haven’s Beach in Sag Harbor.
Mr. Koch studies vitamins in phytoplankton, and his mission is to try to find out what factors and pollutants cause the organisms to die. “You can add ammonium phosphate and urea,” and by tracking the substances with a radioactive tag, record the different effects. “Our lab is very multidisciplinary on the whole water-quality issue,” he said.
Mr. Koch holds a special place in his heart for the campus, and said he’s thrilled to see the “fledgling” college rise from the ashes of the place where he earned his undergraduate degree. He said he hoped it will boost the economy of the town, too, with college students around once again to rent apartments, shop at delis, and so forth. “It’s really getting undergraduates involved that’s the key.”
Stony Brook “also provides lots of money for people like me — graduate students and post-doctoral associates,” he said, adding that most of his colleagues are still struggling with second jobs, but they do receive stipends for their research, which essentially pays for their education.
Since he is following in his mentor’s footsteps, “It’s not advisable for a career move to stay in the same place,” but instead, he will take his knowledge and use it where it is needed. “But I don’t think I’d mind coming back and teaching here,” he said.
“Science, like anything else, has a lot to do with networking,” he said. “So to be an internationally renowned center will bring in a lot of people.”
“I had a famous scientist in San Francisco tell me, ‘Science is nothing, it doesn’t mean anything, unless it’s out there,’ ” he said. With a little help from his friends, colleagues, and supporters, Mr. Koch said he will do whatever it takes to get the word out.