OGL Newsletter
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Did you notice our new logo? OGL has partnered with Northeastern University and New England Biolabs to form a new Center at Northeastern University. Read on to find out why.
And, as always, follow our expeditions and other news from the marine world on our Facebook and Twitter pages!
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NEU and OGL - Fueling Urban Coastal Sustainability
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 Throughout history, people have lived and built thier homes and cities on coasts. According to the World Resources Institute, over 50% of the world's population live within 200 km of marine coastlines or estuaries. In fact, 65% of the world's large cities (with populations over 2.5M) are located on marine coasts.
Given this, it is not hard to believe that the future of our oceans is closely tied to the future of our cities. That is why Northeastern University and its Marine Science Center at Nahant recently launched a new program called the Urban Coastal Sustainability Initiative, slated to receive at least $10 million in endowment during the coming years as part of the university's "Empower" campaign. This initiative builds interdisciplinary research and teaching programs aimed at exploring the complex relationships between urban development and ocean health. Ecologists, biologists, chemists, engineers, statisticians, legal scholars, economists, policy experts and others work together to explore options for sustainable coastal development.
 A centerpiece of this program, will be the expansion of Northeastern's state-of-the-art research and educational facilities at its Marine Science Center in Nahant, MA - and we will play an integral role in that expansion. A new partnership between OGL, Northeastern University and OGL's long time corporate sponsor, New England Biolabs, will establish OGL as a Center in the Department of Marine and Environmental Science at Northeastern, with its new headquarters on the Nahant Campus.
The new partnership and location provide an ideal growth opportunity for OGL. Students and faculty from Northeastern will participate in building and studying the OGL collections, scientists from around the world will benefit from ready access to this increasingly critical collection of genomic materials and data, and OGL will gain by aligning itself with the extraordinary faculty and infrastructure of one of the nation's most dynamic and fastest growing research universities.
OGL Board Chairman and President, Rich Roberts says, "This partnership will ensure OGL's growth and stability in the years ahead, thereby justifying the vision of Don Comb [founder of New England Biolabs] in starting OGL many years ago and providing a lasting legacy both for him and for New England Biolabs."
OGL expects to move to Northeastern's MSC campus by the beginning of 2014.
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Exploring the Depths of the Caribbean
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(Top) Exploration vessel E/V Nautilus, with its remotely operated vehicles (Left) ROV Hercules, and (Right) ROV Argus.
Photos: Ocean Exploration Trust
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Our team is now home from Bermuda, but sample collection doesn't end there. In fact, the vast majority of OGL samples come from collaborators who have received and been trained in the use of our sample collection kits and protocols. One such collaboration is with Dr. Katy Croff Bell (Chief Scientist) and the eclectic scientific crew aboard the 211-ft Nautilus, a research and exploration ship run out of the University of Rhode Island and owned and operated by Ocean Exploration Trust under the guidance of Professor Robert Ballard. The crew's current mission over the summer and fall of 2013 is to explore the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico into the Caribbean Sea, ranging from the US shoreline in the Gulf and following the "Spice Necklace" of islands down to Trinidad and Tobago. The crew is using the vessel's autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) Sentry and ROVs Hercules and Argus to investigate cold-water seeps, dead zones, deep-sea coral reefs, and other targets of interest. Along the way, they are mapping the sea floor, taking environmental measurements, and collecting geological and biological samples many of which will be archived at OGL. Curious about what goes on aboard the Nautilus and where they are right now? You can follow the crew real-time through their live web feed!
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| Coming Soon... |
Beyond the Sea
We've talked in previous issues about how ocean warming has affected life underwater, especially changes to subsurface ecosystems and marine species impact. Follow us next month as we present new findings about how the trickle-down effects of warmer seawater temperatures are impacting life... ABOVE the surface.
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This Atlantic puffin (Fratercula arctica) has a mouthful of herring fry - now a rare sight in today's warmer marine environment.
Photo: Thomas Aarvak
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DONATE TO OGL
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Want to help OGL document and preserve the spectacular genetic diversity of our world's oceans? Visit http://www.oglf.org/Support.htm
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