< Back to Marine Biology Homepage
Hofstra University Marine Laboratory
by Michelle Harrison
Background
to the Laboratory
Facilities
Funding
Program
Setup
Present
Projects
The laboratory was started in 1980 by Gene Kaplan in conjunction with Columbus Beach Cottages at Columbus Beach in St. Ann, Jamaica. It allows groups of students from Hofstra University as well as other universities and high schools to come to Jamaica for a week or two to collect, study and observe organisms in their natural habitats across the bay.
They have a total of three small marine labs capable of holding 20 students each. Each lab has a display case of organisms that have been collected. The program also owns two small boats that are used to take the students out on the field trips. They have a small but adequate library that the students are able to use. There is a dive shop not owned by the university but where students are able to get equipment for snorkeling. Boarding facilities are available through Columbus Beach Cottages.
A fee is paid directly to Hofstra University for the use of the facilities. The room and board fees are paid to the Columbus Beach Cottages.
A group of students along with their professors come to the Marine Laboratory and spend a week or two at the cottages. The professors work closely with the resident directors of the lab, who work for a year at the site and then are replaced by two more, to organize lectures and the field trips. The students are assigned a project to do during their stay, which is usually a list of one hundred species, which they are to collect and observe. Hofstra University students are requires taking an examination at the end of their session but this is not required of the other schools who participate.
A group of students recently discovered a new specie of shark and are now in the process of dissection so as to gather important information about this new specie as well as in preparation of naming the specie. The professor known only as "Big John" discovered this new species. At the time they were looking very closely at the livers of the sharks. The resident instructors known as Mike and Sylvia were in the process of studying specie of hermaphroditic fish known as wrasses. They wee studying specifically the reproductive behavior of the wrasses which are believed to reproduce similarly to the organisms, limpets
For
more information:
Email: huni@cwjamaica.com