The SoMAS Southampton Marine Station is located on Old Fort Pond in Shinnecock Bay, a short walk from the main campus. From the facility, students and faculty have direct access to local bays, estuaries, and the Atlantic Ocean. The marine station is the site of five laboratories and a fleet of boats including the R/V Paumanok, a 44-foot ocean-going vessel used for coastal research, the R/V Shinnecock, a 35-foot platform craft used for sampling local bays and estuaries and the R/V Peconic, a 45-foot catamaran, houseboat-style vessel for operation in protected bays and rivers. Smaller outboard craft are equipped with winches, davits and metering wheels for sampling instruments such as oxygen analyzers, CTD-probes, and trawls. The aquarium/wet laboratory allows maintenance of live marine species throughout the year for classroom use.

A three-laboratory facility was completed in early 1986 to complement the existing structures. These laboratories house standard equipment including an autoanalyser, atomic absorption spectrophotometer, salinometer, fluorimeter, osmometer, and Coulter Counter. Faculty utilize these facilities for their research, and students are encouraged to utilize these facilities and instruments during their course work and while undertaking independent studies.

New Marine Sciences Laboratory to Be Built at SoMAS Southampton

In 2009, $6.9 million was made available in the State University of New York (SUNY) capital budget for the construction of a new, state-of-the-art marine science laboratory at the site of the current Marine Station on the waterfront at Stony Brook Southampton. The present facilities are not adequate to support the explosive growth of SoMAS’s undergraduate marine science and environmental science programs, which now enroll more than 500 students. Moreover, new facilities are needed to support cutting edge marine research of regional and national significance. On the drawing board is a 12,000 ft2 facility providing space for expanded wet lab facilities, for aquaculture research, labs dedicated to use by undergraduates, a marine instrumentation lab, offices and a space for public education and outreach. The lab will feature a modern, computer-operated running seawater system, analytical labs and equipment for use in research and teaching. The new building will replace several of the older buildings on the site of the present Marine Station. The expanded Marine Station will become the hub for waterfront recreation including diving and sailing programs as well as expanded programs for K-12 school groups, summer marine science camps, public lectures and education cruises on Shinnecock Bay.The marine laboratory will be LEEDS-certified.

Construction of the new laboratory at the Marine Station began in May of 2012 and is to be completed in 12 months.