Only marine lab on San Francisco Bay to close amid budget shortfall

From SF Chronicle: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/sfsu-marine-lab-closing-20147047.php

San Francisco Bay’s only marine laboratory, an important site of climate change research, will close due to lack of funding, San Francisco State University announced Tuesday. 

San Francisco State’s Estuary and Ocean Science Center’s location in deep water along Tiburon’s northern coastline has made it ideal for research into bay ecosystems, sea level rise and ocean acidification. Also called the Romberg Tiburon Campus, it’s the home of several university professors and researchers and a place where graduate students do hands-on work. The university has conducted research of some kind at the site, a former U.S. Navy base, since 1978 and will close the site in phases. 

“The loss of something like this place — it’s so unique in the Bay Area,” said Katharyn Boyer, the center’s interim executive director and a biologist who works on climate change restoration projects in the bay.

A potential closure of the campus has been looming since 2022, when the university announced that the research center, which has significant long-term maintenance and infrastructure repair needs, would have to be financially self-sustaining. Boyer said she was able to whittle down the center’s operating budget and raise all but $550,000 per year to fund it. 

That was not enough, as San Francisco State faces what its president in December called a “financial emergency.” The university has a budget shortfall of approximately $25 million, because of declining enrollment and because the state cut close to 8% in funding to California State University in its budget. Another casualty was Sonoma State University, which recently announced a budget shortfall of $24 million and its intention to slash six academic departments as well as athletics programs. 

“We were hoping that the governor’s budget would change,” said San Francisco State Provost Amy Sueyoshi, who said Boyer’s fundraising efforts have been “heroic.” But, she said, “Everything is on the table” for potential cuts.

The closure of the Estuary and Ocean Science Center will save San Francisco State $1 million to $1.2 million in its first year, according to Sueyoshi, who said she could not project exact savings. She also said it’s not clear what will happen to the site. The faculty and staff working at the Tiburon campus will slowly be moved to the university’s main campus, and no layoffs are pending, according to Robert King, a university spokesman. 

However, it’s unclear whether the work of adjunct professors and researchers at the campus will continue to be funded, said Boyer. She is also concerned that one-time costs to close the site, some of which is located on water leased from the state, will be substantial. 

Last year Boyer published a model for eelgrass restoration — which helps mitigate the effects of climate change — around the San Francisco Bay with the Audubon Society. With funding from the Environmental Protection Agency, the center and the Audubon Society are planting 15 acres of eelgrass in Richardson Bay. 

The center benefits from its unique location in deep water, where research vessels can easily bring plants in and keep them cool and wet for storage, and then take them out to plant the next day.   

“There’s no other place to do that work,” Boyer said. “If this place shuts down I don’t know what’s going to happen.” 

Boyer said that hands-on field and lab classes are a specialty at the center, including one on wetlands ecology.

Sueyoshi acknowledged the importance of the center’s climate change work. 

“If we were a differently resourced university, we would completely support invaluable research that could only happen here at State,” she said. 

But she said the university’s central mission is to serve undergraduates, who do not currently take classes at the center, though many take field trips or do activities there. She also said that the university has seen a decline in enrollment among both undergraduates and graduate students in its School of the Environment.   

“We know that climate change is happening and climate justice is imperative,” Sueyoshi said. She added, “Even though it’s a pressing issue, our students are not electing to take classes in this area.”

Reach Tara Duggan: tduggan@sfchronicle.com; X: @taraduggan