Researchers and students at San Jose State’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories have the opportunity to help in the recovery of the Olympia oyster population and researching emperor penguins in Antarctica, among many other projects relating to marine biology.
Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, located about 90 minutes south of campus in Moss Landing, Calif., is a marine science research and education facility, overseen and primarily funded by SJSU.
Multiple universities from the CSU system, including San Francisco, Stanislaus, East Bay, Fresno, Monterey Bay and Sacramento, participate in the lab and contribute funding and faculty members.
“Having a lot of different expertise allows us to explore the oceans and understand the effects of global climate change in a much more effective way,” said Ivano Aiello, interim director of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories.
SJSU bought the facility for Moss Landing Marine Laboratories in 1965 for $210,000, according to the university’s History of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories webpage.
The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake destroyed most of the facility’s buildings, resulting in the transportation of most of the equipment to trailers in Salinas, Calif., according to the same webpage.
For nine years, the lab operated out of trailers in a lot neighboring a cemetery and a chocolate factory while its new facilities were constructed, according to a blog post on SJSU’s MLML webpage.
“Now we have this state of the art, beautiful building up on the hill,” Aiello said.
He said after the rebuild, the lab expanded to include a marina, a wharf, a shore lab facility and other features that make it a “self-sustaining campus.”
Moss Landing Marine Laboratories is partially made up of eight faculty labs, including biological oceanography, chemical oceanography, geological oceanography, ichthyology, which is the study of fishes, invertebrate ecology, phycology, physical oceanography and vertebrate ecology, according to the labs website.
The lab is also partnered with a number of groups outside the CSU system.
Some of these groups include the Western Association of Marine Laboratories, the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System and the Consortium for Ocean Leadership, according to its affiliations webpage.
“These other groups extend the range of topics and research opportunities, education opportunities that we offer here,” Aiello said.
One of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories’ primary functions is to administer the Master of Science in marine science, according to the lab’s about Moss Landing Marine Laboratories webpage.
Graduate students from CSU universities in northern and central California go to Moss Landing Marine Laboratories to work with faculty members and researchers to get research experience.
Jacob Harris, marine science master’s student at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, said he appreciates the hands-on approach that the lab encourages.
He said he is working with a team that is attempting to recover the depleting Olympia oyster population at Elkhorn Slough, an estuary commonly studied at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories.
“I feel like I’m doing what I've been working toward,” Harris said. “I really got to shape my own project. I really got to make my own goals and design my program in a way that I’m getting what I want out of it.”
Tom Connolly, associate professor of physical oceanography at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, said the relationships formed between faculty members and graduate students during research projects are mutually beneficial.
“Being able to work with a graduate student who’s working on a focused master’s thesis, that’s really diving into detail, is a really valuable part of our job,” Connolly said.
Aiello said there are many advantages to the presence of graduate students at the lab.
“The fact that many of my colleagues are so successful in their research is because they do work with grad students, absolutely,” he said.
Sydney McDermott, marine biology graduate student and student assistant at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, said the lab connects students to excellent resources.
McDermott, who completed her undergraduate in Maine, said she was extremely interested in the lab because of its “stellar reputation” as a marine science graduate school.
Currently in the last year of her master’s, she said she is focused on her thesis on researching the impacts of shipping containers that are lost in the deep sea, and the marine life communities that form because of them.
The lab has around 95 students, according to McDermott, and around 77 faculty, staff and research affiliates, according to the lab’s staff directory.
McDermott said this kind of diversity within a relatively small group makes for a very pleasant atmosphere.
“It’s a very tightly knit community and everyone’s doing all of this incredible science and it’s not isolating to do something super different than everyone else,” she said. “It’s so wonderful, the kind of spirit of camaraderie and collaboration here.”
McDermott said she recently accepted an out-of-state PhD position for the fall.
She said her time at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories showed her that she is on the right path and would like to continue her research on the impacts humans have on the ocean.
Many of the lab’s last 238 graduates went to PhD programs or obtained employment in universities, environmental agencies or nonprofits, according to SJSU’s Moss Landing Marine Laboratories master's program webpage.
“We’re creating a new workforce for the future challenges of the planet,” Aiello said. “We’re providing a pipeline of highly skilled marine scientists in the workforce.”
Moss Landing Marine Laboratories has three main avenues for funding according to the lab’s 2019-2020 Annual Report.
One comes from SJSU, the second from the SJSU Research Foundation and the third from a wide array of donors outside the CSU system.
SJSU’s College of Science provides the lab with a budget every year, according to the same report.
With this budget, the laboratory pays for the salaries of all faculty and staff, as well as equipment and operations of the main lab.
The SJSU Research Foundation also helps plan, fund and manage the university’s research projects, according to its webpage.
It gives a percentage of each of the grants it receives to Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, according to the same annual report.
In addition, federal and state grants, nonprofit donations and private donors make up the rest of the funding for the lab.
Aiello said with this money, faculty at the lab can buy equipment and hire students and technicians for their projects.
He also said there are advantages to having such a diverse set of faculty, researchers and students associated with Moss Landing Marine Laboratories.
“Our students get exposed to a network of expertise and opportunities which is very broad, even beyond SJSU,” Aiello said. “Many of our students have job opportunities or academic opportunities that are unique.”
Along with its eight faculty labs and 10 partner groups, Moss Landing Marine Laboratories has 15 affiliated labs.
These laboratories are dedicated to specific topics of research such as wetland science, environmental biotechnology and research diving, among others.
Aiello said the wide range of topics explored at the lab increases the quality of the work they do.
Connolly said, as a scientist and educator, he has a special appreciation for the varied people and projects at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories.
“Diversity is really essential for developing new ideas,” Connolly said. “As a faculty member, I still get to learn about new things by working with people who specialize in different areas of science, so I feel really lucky in that respect.”
He said one thing most people at SJSU don’t realize about the lab is that undergraduate students are welcome to take classes there and get involved in research projects, even if they don’t have a background in marine biology.
“I studied engineering as an undergraduate,” Connolly said. “I think there’s a lot of students in those types of fields that might not realize that oceanography or environmental science is an option for them.”
McDermott said the Moss Landing Marine Laboratories will host an open house event on April 22, its first open house in person since the start of the pandemic.
The annual event is meant to raise money for student research projects, according to the webpage for 2022’s virtual open house.
The different labs within Moss Landing Marine Laboratories host educational activities and set up tables to display the research they’ve been working on, according to the same webpage.
“It’s really beautiful here and everyone should come take a look if they have the opportunity,” McDermott said.
Aiello said he has high hopes for the future of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories.
He said he predicts that a lot of their work will continue efforts toward understanding the effects of climate change and finding potential solutions.
“I think that in the next 10 years, we’re gonna be able to step up on the level of education and skills that the students who come to this program will acquire on topics that are gonna be fundamental for the survival of our species,” Aiello said.
