50th Anniversary Blog Posts
The MLML 50th Anniversary Book
By Jim Harvey (15 June 2017) As I have mentioned before in a previous post, we have secured some funding and procured the services of Nora Deans and Eric Cline to help produce a celebratory and historical book about the first 50 years of MLML. Here are some mock ups …
Happy Holidays
By Jim Harvey (22 December 2016) 2016 has been an eventful, exciting, and exhausting year. We celebrated 50 years of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, and many of you celebrated with us. We created 58 blogs throughout the year, we had numerous events (a VIP reception, 50th party at the lab …
A SCUBA Diving Fanatic and His Friends
By Tim Herrlinger (7 December 2016) MLML graduate students travel many financial paths along their educational odyssey to obtain an advanced degree. Often these endeavors are undesirable, but the key is to balance risk and reward. The Beginning Mark Carr introduced me to the world of SCUBA diving for pay. …
The legless lizards of the MLML hill
By Linda Kuhntz (1 November 2016) The California Legless Lizard (Anniella pulchra) is by nature an elusive creature and difficult to study because they live underground. Still, early surveys at our new MLML building site indicated that there were legless lizards present and experts thought that we might find …
MLML 50th Celebration – Part II
By Jim Harvey (2 September 2016) We are starting to get some of the pictures from the MLML 50th Anniversary celebration, so for the next few blogs I am just going to post pictures from the weekend. All the following photos were taken by David Schmitz. Please comment as needed. …
We survived and enjoyed: The MLML 50th celebration
By Jim Harvey (12 August 2016) It was an awesome weekend (6 and 7 August 2016), as the MLML alumni, and current and past staff, faculty, and students assembled, talked, laughed, and celebrated. We had 450 people here on Saturday, and given that most of the people attending were probably …
MLML: 50 Glorious, Weird, Fun, Productive, and Successful Years
By Jim Harvey (5 August 2016) In the 50 years of its existence MLML has accomplished a great deal. Kenneth Coale calls it the “Little Marine Lab that Could”. John Martin said that its success was due to the MLML “spirit”. It certainly has a lot to do with people …
Look Micro, Think Macro: The Legacy of 40+ Years of Electron Microscopy at MLML
By Ivano Aiello (28 July 2016) Popular science magazines and documentaries depict marine scientists as sea going adventurers equipped with a pair of binoculars or a fish net, or explorers who dive in the abyss using SCUBA or with submersibles to observe the ‘big’ things that populate the oceans. The …
The K-T Boundary of Moss Landing Marine Labs
By Gary Greene ( 21 July 2016) The Cretaceous-Tertiary (K-T) boundary in geologic stratigraphy marks a seminal time in geologic history, a time when dinosaurs and other organisms were extinguished from the surface of the earth and the rise of new genera and species occurred. A similar type of evolution …
The Pacific Shark Research Center (PSRC)
By Joseph J. Bizzarro (14 July 2016) Sharks are sexy, sure – but skates and chimaeras are sexy too. You want proof? Well, good (or too bad, because here it comes). This week’s blog is about MLML’s Pacific Shark Research Center, an extremely productive program that was initiated in 2002 …
MLML Student Life in the 1990s
By Erica J. Burton ( 8 July 2016) Being a MLML student during the post-earthquake 90s meant learning, working, studying, and maybe living (caretakers) in the Salinas trailers (Fig. 1). Sitting in the middle of agriculture fields may have made a student question their recent arrival and admission to the …
Seriously Formative Years at Stillwater Cove
By Mark Carr, Todd Anderson, and Mickey Singer (30 June 2016) Over the years, Stillwater Cove in Carmel Bay has become one of the most well-studied kelp forests on the West Coast, thanks to the foundation of research established there by Mike Foster and the good graces of the Pebble …
Stillwater Cove: A Magical Diving and Research Spot
By Ross Clark, Dan Reed, Bob Enea, Dave Schiel, Matt Edwards, Mickey Singer, and Jasmine Ruvalcaba (26 June 2016) Stillwater Cove of the 1970 and 1980s Dan Reed: One of the things that I remember most about doing my thesis research at Stillwater Cove was the sense of feeling like …
James Nybakken: The first faculty member of MLML
By Gary McDonald, Mark Silberstein, and Jim Harvey (16 June 2016) Dr. James Nybakken was born in Minnesota, received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, and was hired by California State College at Hayward (now California State University East Bay) in 1965. In 1966, with the formation …
R/V Point Sur goes to Antartica
By Tara Pastuszek (9 June 2016)During the Austral Summer of 2013, the R/V Point Sur sailed to Antarctica and spent two months supporting operations while based at Palmer Research Station. Participating in this historic voyage was a privilege and I feel I can speak for the entire crew in expressing …
Sea Grant – Sharing a 50th Anniversary with MLML
50 years of the Sea Grant vision: science serving the coast By Rick Starr (2 June 2016) What is Sea Grant and what do you do at MLML? That is the question I am most often asked when I tell people I am with California Sea Grant and MLML. If …
The Museum
by Greg Cailliet with help from others (26 May 2016) This is a compilation of input from many MLML faculty, staff and graduate students, all of whom were involved in one way or the other with the operation of the museum at MLML. This is organized in chronological order. Much …
The Others That Turned 50
By Jim Harvey (20 May 2016) So as I have been preparing these blogs, I have been noting other marine labs and entities that also were celebrating 50 years of existence. It became obvious that many other marine labs originated at about the same time that Moss Landing Marine Laboratories …
MLML Computing
By Bill Broenkow (13 May 2016) This account tells the story of my involvement in introducing computers to Moss Landing Marine Laboratories. There's not much logic or plan in how this came about. In those days (the early 1970s) things just happened as teaching and research evolved. Furthermore I had …
Goodbye R/V Point Sur
By Kenneth Coale (5 May 2016)I was aboard from her first cruises out of Moss Landing in 1983, to her last cruises from MLML in 2014. Maybe that is why I was the scientist asked to speak at her farewell, and maybe this is also why I was so reluctant. She …
The MLML-MBARI Library
By Sheila Baldridge, Joan Parker, and Jim Harvey (27 April 2016) Every good educational or research institution has an excellent library. And it is not just the books, periodicals, maps, records, tables, chairs, and connection to information that make it excellent, more importantly it is the librarian. MLML has been …
The Good Pirate John Martin Seizes the R/V Cape Florida
By Kenneth Coale (20 April 2016) (An expanded excerpt from the John Martin biography1) John Martin was the lab’s third director, but in many ways, its first oceanographer. He arrived at a time when there wasn’t a proper oceanographic research vessel and this posed something of a glaring deficiency. John …
And Just Who are Mother Nature’s Brightest Crayons?
By Roger Helm (14 April 2016) It was a typical cold and foggy spring morning as Jim and I loaded the fishing gear on the M/V Orca, MLML's smallish open deck work boat. The year was 1978 and Jim was working on his Master’s thesis concerning the life history of …
Moss Landing: a poem
By Ed Stark (MLML student in 1969) [8 April 2016] One day the cosmic chef Looked into an empty freezer. A few odds and ends remained: Sand and water, dead kelp and fog. He made the beaches of Moss Landing As an afterthought to an orgasm of creation. Who could …
The Open House t shirts
By Many Artists, and comments from Jim Harvey (31 March 2016) Anyone that has come through MLML probably has one or two MLML t shirts. Most were designed for the annual MLML Open House, and have become collector's items for some. In this blog I thought I would just place …
The MLML Softball Teams
By Lloyd Kitazono (1975-1978)Lloyd Kitazono: In the spring of 1977, MLML put together a men's softball team that played in Monterey's Slow-Pitch Softball league. The team practiced, at least a couple of times, at Moss Landing Elementary School. What the team may have lacked in softball experience and talent, it …
Teeth, Mud, and Nets
By Dion Oxman (17 March 2016) My MLML tenure started on probation and in transition. I initially came to the Lab to work with the Bernd Wursig on marine mammals. To be blunt, however, my undergraduate GPA sucked. My GRE scores were not much better. In University terms, that put …
What’s the Worst Thing that Could Happen? : Reflections on a Shark and Ray Fishery Project in the Gulf of California
By Joe Bizzarro and Wade Smith (10 March 2016) Yipi rumbled down the narrow, craggy road at a speed that seemed unsustainable. “One More Cup of Coffee” by Dylan played loudly on the Jeep’s stereo. Sunset was looming and setting up camp before nightfall was important…but maybe not this important. …
Elkhorn Slough is the Cosmic Center of the Universe (so says MLML Alumnus Mark Silberstein… and we concur)
By Mary Yoklavich and Greg Cailliet (3 March 2016) MLML’s students and faculty have been up to their hip boots in the mud of Elkhorn Slough for over 40 years. In 1974, just a few years after the Lab’s establishment, professors Bill Broenkow, Jim Nybakken, and Greg Cailliet coordinated …
MLML: A Career (and life) Stepping Stone
By Anonymous MLML graduate ( 25 February 2016) This is a bit of a wandering and circuitous story, but it illustrates the role MLML can play in one’s professional and personal development and life. I grew up in Philadelphia - I was an east coast city boy. In 1983, I …
Beach Volleyball at MLML
by Greg Cailliet With help from (in alphabetical order) Rich Ajeska, Dave Ambrose, Mark Carr, Mike Foster, John Heine, Roger Helm, Jerry Kashiwada, Stacy Kim, Lloyd Kitazono, Bud Laurent, Dave Lewis, Gary MacDonald, Mike Moser, Dan Reed, and Mary Yoklavich The Early Years (late 1960s) We understand from Jim Nybakken’s …
G. Victor Morejohn and the Great White Shark Hunt on The Rolling O: Part II
By Roger Helm (11 February 2016) “What the heck is that?” “Way cool, look at those teeth?” “Eewh, everything is covered in slime?” “They’re all so tiny… oh, except for that shark, what kind is it?” “Wow, this is really amazing!” “There must be a mile of salps here?” “Are …
G. Victor Morejohn and the Great White Shark Hunt on the Rolling O
By Roger Helm (4 February 2016) “These suckers are HUGE” I remember my brother saying as he took pictures of me dissecting a female Great White Shark that had washed ashore opposite Año Nuevo Island in 1978. And boy was he right. While this shark was a bit over 5m …
The Benthic Lab in Antarctica
By John Oliver and Stacy Kim (25 January 2016) John Oliver: The MLML Antarctic programs started in 1974, when Paul Dayton at SIO (Scripps Institution of Oceanography) invited me to join his benthic research group at McMurdo Station. I had a great advantage over all my peers, because I was …
Open House
By Jim Harvey, Lynn Krasnow, Erica Burton, Greg Cailliet, Heather Fulton-Bennett, Ryan Manzer, Alex Olson, Melissa Nehmens, and Heather Kramp Since the inception of MLML, the students, faculty, and staff have sponsored an Open House. On 29 April 1967, one day after the dedication of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, 500 …
The Shop Guys
By Kenneth Coale (13 January 2016) The thesis defense of MLML students requires an oral presentation of their research project including an introduction, materials and methods, results, conclusions and acknowledgements… followed by a closed-door conference with their thesis committee. With a favorable outcome of this conference, the requirement of their …
The Big Blue House
By Aaron King, Jim Brennan, and Bill Hayden (7 January 2016) Aaron King is a 1989 Ichthyology lab graduate of MLML, and is currently a retired Fed living in the Oakland Hills. Aaron was one of the original employees of the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, where he worked on …
The Slough Stompers: Music to Sort Samples By
by Mark Silberstein, Jim Oakden, Chris Jong, and Tom Harvey (31 December 2015) Each cohort of students coming through MLML has brought a unique personality and spirit and left the Lab’s history and traditions richer. The musical tastes of each group and the collection of musicians among them have been …
Library Move Demonstrated Community Spirit
By Andrew DeVogelaere (23 December 2015) The Library move on 29 and 30 November, 1984 was a big success. About 20 people on Thursday and 60 people on Friday formed a human chain to transfer 14,000 volumes. The distance from the old to the new library is close to …
Scientific Diving at MLML: The middle years, 1982 – 2002
By John Heine (17 December 2015) I came to MLML as a graduate student in the Fall of 1979. The first semester there I took the Marine Science Diving course taught by Gary Ichikawa and Bob vanWagenen, both graduate students. The next summer the lab sent me to a NAUI …
The Great Wave
by Lloyd Kitazano (December 2015) The MLML Wave logo was undoubtedly inspired by the wood block print titled, The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). Hokusai created volumes of beautiful and unique drawings and prints over his lifetime, but The Great Wave off Kanagawa …
G. Victor Morejohn: One of a Kind
By Jim Harvey, Lynne Krasnow, Dave Lewis, Judy Johnson, Jack Ames, Tom Harvey, Barry Turner, Chuck Versaggi , and Genny and Shane Anderson (3 December 2015) One of the early members of the MLML faculty was G. Victor Morejohn, the first marine mammal and seabird specialist at MLML. Dr. Morejohn …
Happy Thanksgiving from everyone at MLML!
Quilting at the Labs – One Stitch at a Time
By Kate Sawyers (16 November 2015) Over the past 13 years, the MLML Quilt Guild has met every Wednesday evening, give or take a few missed times for holidays and vacations. Still hard to believe it’s been this long. How did we come to be? Maybe we owe our existence to …
The Caretakers of MLML
By Mary Yoklavich, Andrew DeVogeleare, Mark Silberstein, Kenneth Coale, Mike Foster Housing has always been a challenge for students at the Lab, which results in lots of interesting variations on what constitutes a home. One housing opportunity came with the job as student caretaker of the property. The lineage of …
Halloween at the Elkhorn Yacht Club
By Andrew DeVogelaere (4 November 2015) In the 80s, 90s, and parts of this past decade, MLML Halloween parties were held at the Elkhorn Yacht Club. Recently the party has been up at the main lab in the seminar room. The setting at the Yacht Club was conducive to wild …
Life in the Trailers
By Jim Harvey (Additions from Kenneth Coale) (30 October 2015) After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake had destroyed the main buildings of MLML, Faculty and Researchers scattered. Some moved in with the recently established MBARI in Pacific Grove, others filled the vaults of the abandoned bank in Castroville with …
Jon and Larry: We Wouldn’t Be On The Hill Without Them
By Jim Harvey, Kenneth Coale, and Greg Cailliet (21 October 2015) An institution such as ours exists on many levels. MLML is loosely integrated into the fabric of the State’s educational system, we have a community presence (both fiscally and organizationally), we are involved at local, state and federal …
Scientific Diving at MLML: The early years
by Mike Foster (14 October 2015) Scientific diving has been an integral part of MLML since 1968 when the first dive class was taught at the Labs during summer session through San Francisco State. Eight students were certified. The program continued under SFS supervision with the diving course taught by …
Marine Dreams
By John Heine (7 October 2015) John Heine, former MLML graduate student and DSO, self-published a book in 2012 entitled "Marine Dreams", about a marine lab in central California. You can guess what it is based on. We provide an excerpt for this weeks blog. We hope you recognize aspects …
The MLML Puppet Show at Open House
By Erin Loury (28 September 2015) Open House is one of my favorite memories of Moss Landing Marine laboratories, and my favorite memory of Open House by far is the puppet show. Puppet show? You could see the skepticism on the faces of some adults and teenagers hearing about this …
Flaming Heads Cruise
By Kenneth and Susan Coale (15 September 2015) When John Martin came to MLML in 1973, he brought with him an interest in oceanography that stretched the capacity of the MLML fleet. Several high profile grants with prominent scientists, both national and international, brought vigor and national recognition to the …
The Day of the Quake
By Jim Harvey and Mary Yoklavich (4 September 2015) It was 17 October 1989 at 5:04 p.m. and I (Jim) was standing outside one of the MLML classrooms talking to Dr. Mike Ledbetter (Geological Oceanography faculty member). Mike had just concluded a lecture to one of my classes on the …
MLML in Baja
By Mike Foster (28 August 2015) Warm seas, cardóns at the shore, whales, turtles, boobies, rhodoliths, naked rocks, fish tacos, crema de cacti – it is no surprise that the Gulf of California has long attracted MLML scientists. We follow the tradition of early Gulf adventures including the famous Ricketts …
MLML Research Vessels
By Mike Prince (21 August 2015) Moss Landing Marine Labs has always been about providing our students with research experiences in the field, which for them is at sea, or in estuaries and bays like Elkhorn Slough, Stillwater cove in Carmel Bay, San Francisco Bay and Delta and far flung …
Those That Used the Hill Before Us
By Jim Harvey (7 August 2015) The hill that MLML occupies today was part of a dune field that became exposed as the last glacial period ended 12,000 years ago when sea level was 420 feet lower. About 8,000 years ago, Native Americans first arrived on the hill and they …
Those That Used the Hill Before Us: Part II
By Jim Harvey (12 August 2015) If you come to the main lab of MLML today you see a spectacular building (LEED Gold certified), with amazing views, and well-outfitted teaching and research spaces. What you don’t see is that there are two large cement foundation slabs and one smaller one …
Happy Fourth of July MLML
Happy Fourth of July MLML Andrew DeVogeleare (4 July 2015) When all MLML buildings were located on the beach, many parties ended with a bonfire. 30 years ago, after a 4th of July party, it was another one of those beautiful evenings. Here, Debbie Molnar is adding Mike Haberland’s Subtidal …
The Beginnings of MLML
THE BEGINNINGS OF MLML In recognition that 2016 marks the 50th Anniversary of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories . By Jim Harvey (29 June 2015) Moss Landing Marine Laboratories (MLML) was conceived by professors at San Jose State College in the early 1960s, and in December 1965 the facility was purchased …
MLML 50th Anniversary Blog
Welcome to Moss Landing Marine Laboratories' 50th Anniversary Blog
Mike Foster
Greg Cailliet
Andrew DeVogelaere
Mary Yoklavich
Erica Burton
Mark Silberstein
Heather Kramp
Mike Prince
Kenneth Coale
Jim Harvey
