Federal ocean-study lab in Sandy Hook could be closed

SANDY HOOK, N.J. - In a room lit by a few red bulbs, dozens of black sea bass approach the glass of a massive tank, their protruding eyes watching two scientists who stare back at them.

It's February, but the fish are acting as though it's May. The males, larger and darker, dart at one another, protecting harems of females that hover near the sandy bottom. Researchers have manipulated temperature and light to shorten the weeks and change the season so the 60 fish inside will reproduce, yielding eggs the scientists will use to examine how climate change affects the species.

But if President Obama's federal budget is approved as written, the fish will be gazing into a Maryland laboratory, and the scientists will have to decide whether to go with them. The 50-year-old laboratory is expected to shut down.

Given that the lab was intentionally positioned so close to New York City, environmental groups and politicians were shocked to learn that federal officials believed the same research could be performed elsewhere.

"We recognize that mandatory spending cuts will require difficult decisions," Democratic U.S. Sens. Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez of New Jersey wrote in a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee. "However, eliminating funding for this facility is a short-sighted decision that will not restore fiscal security, but will eliminate jobs and undermine important research."

Sandy Hook, a 1,665-acre barrier peninsula in Monmouth County, sticks out like a finger pointing at the Hudson River, where pollution from New York City flows into the bay. Because the lab is along the densely populated Jersey Shore, it's uniquely poised to observe how humans - and the messes they make - affect the ocean, researchers and advocates said.

"The only ocean research center downstream of New York City should not be the first one on the chopping block," said Sean T. Dixon, a lawyer with the advocacy group Clean Ocean Action. "That just seems ludicrous."

But the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which operates the lab, said the site is too expensive. NOAA leases the building from the state for $2.8 million a year.

"While NOAA values the activities conducted at the Sandy Hook laboratory, much of its activity can be conducted at other NOAA facilities without using leased space and incurring the associated lease costs," agency spokesman David P. Miller said. "The lease for the Sandy Hook facility expires in December 2013, making this action timely."

The lab's work on contamination and fishes' uptake of heavy metals would be moved to Milford, Conn., and its climate-change study would move to Maryland beginning in 2014. None of the lab's 50 jobs would be cut, Miller said, although researchers would have to move.

The studies wouldn't be the same, said Michael DeLuca, assistant director of the Institute of Marine and Coastal Sciences at Rutgers University.

"Those are much different areas; they're certainly not as urban," he said. "They just don't face the same problems we face here in New Jersey."

It will take months to finalize the federal budget, and supporters of the Sandy Hook lab remain hopeful they can secure funding, possibly by renegotiating the lease with the state. A large chunk of the annual lease cost, $1.2 million, is repayment to the state for a 20-year bond to cover the cost of rebuilding the lab; an arsonist burned it down in 1985.

"There is no other facility in the Northeast that can do what the Howard lab does," U.S. Rep. Frank Pallone (D., N.J.) said in a statement Friday. "I am committed to doing everything possible to keep the lab open and ensure that the important work being done there continues."

Last year, the James J. Howard Marine Sciences Laboratory - named for the former New Jersey Third District congressman who helped rebuild it after the arson - celebrated 50 years of studying New Jersey's coastal fish, including sea bass and winter and summer flounder.

It is one of five in the nation funded by a federal grant to study ocean acidification, or how excess carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from pollution is absorbed by the ocean, altering its chemistry. Senior researcher Chris Chambers already has shown that even the smallest change in pH greatly affects fish; lowering the pH by 0.2 of a point decreased the number of summer flounder eggs that would survive the more acidic waters, he said.

It has taken two years to build an elegant system that allows researchers to manipulate salinity, temperature, and carbon dioxide levels, all using a flow-through system that takes water from the bay, strips away what's not needed, and adds what is. The tiniest fluctuations cause black lines on a nearby computer monitor to move up or down slowly, like water rolling under a moored boat.

"We can heat it up, we can chill it; all that's controlled," said Daniel Wieczorek, 32, a technician on the acidification project. "Nobody does it the way we do it."

Lab director Tom Noji said the system could be recreated elsewhere but would take years to rebuild, delaying the research.

The ocean acidification project alone has generated enough funding for the lab to employ 12 people, Noji said. This year, the lab received $400,000 for the project, and researchers were confident they would attract enough funding to keep the project going for three more years.

In a room down the hall from the sea bass, Beth Phelan, the Northeast coordinator for the national ocean acidification study, watched brown-spotted summer flounder shake free from their sandy hiding spots and skitter across a pool.

"They have big mouths," she said as the flat fish circled the perimeter. "And they bite."

Summer and winter flounder live off the Jersey coast, and researchers are interested in seeing whether climate change will disturb their development at the earliest life stages, when the fish are vulnerable eggs and larvae.

Beyond federal research, scientists at Sandy Hook cooperate with local universities, taking on interns and post-doctoral students. Its employees work with fishery groups as well as the state Department of Environmental Protection. They're involved in research during sewage spills and algal blooms, and they aid in the Barnegat Bay shellfish restoration program.

The lab has expensive, modern equipment that other labs can't afford.

"We would lose a valued research partner," DeLuca said. "Students would certainly lose out on not being able to work with federal researchers. . . . It's a tremendous asset."

For some long-time workers, such as Claire Steimle, the lab's librarian, the Sandy Hook laboratory has become a kind of second home.

In the library, beyond the scholarly journals and the navigational maps, sit 21 blackened books. Fire charred the page edges and water warped the covers.

Steimle, 61, of Ocean Township, remembers pulling the volumes from the remains of the original lab, burned to the ground when a park ranger torched the building in 1985. The smell permeated "the Hook" for days.

"Personally, it would break my heart to break this up," she said, looking at the stacks of books.