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Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History
Blue Heron
Smithsonian Marine Station

Facilities

The Smithsonian Marine Station has been located at its 8-acre campus at 701 Seaway Drive, Fort Pierce, Florida since May 1999. It provides offices and individual laboratories for visiting scientists, resident staff and postdoctoral fellows, a conference room and computer room, and general-use laboratories for chemistry, histology, molecular work, confocal microscopy, preparations for electron microscopy, and a small wet laboratory.

Non-Smithsonian research scientists who wish to conduct studies at the Marine Station are welcome on a space-available basis. Laboratory services include shared use of the wet lab and histology lab, use of basic microscopes, and use of other Station equipment which is designated for general use. Visiting scientists are responsible for providing their own expendable supplies and must, of course, adhere to the Marine Station’s policies and procedures. Potential visitors should refer to this list of fees and direct questions and visitor application requests to Head Scientist, Dr. Valerie Paul.

RESEARCH LAB (not open to the public): 

701 Seaway Drive

Fort Pierce, FL 34949

Tel: 772-462-6220

Fax: 772-461-8154

For use in making scientific collections, the Station owns:

  • Two 11-foot sea kayaks for work in shallow waters of limited accessibility
  • Several skiffs for work within the Indian River Lagoon
  • A 21-foot center console Triumph for near-shore work and diving
  • A new 36-foot vessel, the R/V Sunburst, for use off-shore. The R/V Sunburst is outfitted for diving and research operations with radar, satellite weather, GPS navigation/ positioning system with dual bottom scan transducers, air conditioning, dry and wet work areas, raw and freshwater system, and AC generator. It has an A-Frame system with hydrographic winch with a drum capacity of 300m of 1/2" AmSteel cable for handling collecting equipment, including:
    • side scan towed sonar
    • Phleger corer
    • J & O box corer
    • Higgins anchor dredge
    • 10" diam. pipe dredge
    • epi-benthic sled dredge
    • VanVeen grab
    • mud snapper
    • mid-water trawl
    • 4 single otter trawls (mesh sizes 1.25-1.5")
    • 3/4m & 1m diam. plankton nets (100, 210, 500, 1000um mesh sizes)

The Station has several vehicles for local transportation and field work including a 4-passenger SUV, a 4-passenger pickup truck, an 8-passenger van and a 15-passenger extended van.

Visitors to the Marine Station are housed in the Tyson House on the SMS campus. Overflow visitors rent rooms at local motels in Fort Pierce and Vero Beach, FL

  • dissecting and compound microscopes
  • fluorescence microscopes
  • Zeiss LSM510 confocal microscope
  • 3 temperature-controlled incubators
  • centrifuges, including a refrigerated centrifuge and a Speed Vac
  • analytical balances
  • an ultra-cold freezer
  • electrophoresis equipment
  • thermocycler for DNA analysis
  • fluorimeter
  • BioTek Enoch 
    micro-volume spectrophotometer
  • Shimadzu UV/Vis spectrophotometer
  • NanoDrop UV/Vis spectrophotometer
  • integrating quantum radiometer-photometer with submersible PAR light probe
  • computer imaging stations including film and flatbed scanners
  • photomacrographic setup
  • photographic copystand
  • digital cameras
  • digital video camera
  • freeze drier
  • rotary evaporators
  • gas chromato-graph/mass spectrometer with autosampler
  • binary HPLC with dual wavelength detector
  • quatrinary HPLC with diode array detector and 100 vial autosampler
  • biological safety cabinet
  • flow cytometer
  • tissue processor
  • rotary and ultramicrotomes
  • critical point dryer
  • sputter coater
  • access to an Hitachi S-4800 STEM