HISTORICAL CENTENNIAL TIMELINE
FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON'S

FRIDAY HARBOR LABORATORIES 1903-2010

compiled by Claudia E. Mills and Colin O. Hermans
with help from Gretchen and Charles Lambert, Arthur Whiteley,
Richard Norris, and Megumi and Richard Strathmann,

and with help from the late Friday Harbor town lay historian Tony Surina,
who read through the local newspaper archives and
extracted hundreds of pages of articles with news about FHL
from the "Islander" and the "Friday Harbor Journal"

The Earliest Years (1903-1910) under joint leadership of Trevor Kincaid and T. C. Frye

1903 - UW Zoology Professor Trevor Kincaid searches for a site for a marine biology field station in the Puget Sound region, and selects Friday Harbor over Port Townsend and Rocky Bay in Kitsap County, concluding that the diversity in the San Juan Islands more than made up for its remoteness. Kincaid had earlier visited Friday Harbor for several days with N. L. Gardner, a graduate student from Berkeley who was particularly interested in marine algae and who had recently taught high school on Whidbey Island and collected extensively locally. During that trip, Kincaid was impressed by the "great wealth of life in that area" (from family memoir "The Adventures of an Omnologist" written by Trevor Kincaid mainly for his family when he was a very old man ­ provided by daughter Marjorie Kincaid to FHL in 2001).

1904 - Captain Warbass loans a cabin south of Friday Harbor (at what was later known as Kwan Lamah) to UW Zoology Professor Trevor Kincaid and UW Botany Professor T. C. Frye. The first members of the party arrive June 15, with furniture, a stove, and blankets for the cabin, equipment to set up a darkroom, and a rowboat - other boats are obtained in the islands. Captain Douglass from Shaw Island and the Dolly D. are hired, although the summer started by using the Sea-Gull, since the Dolly D. was not finished. A boat is fixed up for dredging by adding a windlass and a washing table for dredge contents and is christened the Royal Barge. Tents are set up for sleeping (see Station Diary, 1904).

No formal classes are taught, but 6 weeks of summer field studies are begun with about a dozen students - at least during low tides, the breakfast bell rings at 4 am and work starts at 4:30 am. The laboratory is outside on a 3 x 10 foot table set under a fir tree. Much dredging is done, including off Upright Head, in Deer Harbor, San Juan Channel, around the Wasp Islands, and at Salmon Banks. Field trips include a visit to the limeworks at Roche Harbor, to Mt. Constitution, and to Kanaka Bay (the boys walked, the girls rode in a big lumber wagon). [Kanaka Bay, described as "MUD! - Acres of it! (Station Diary, 1904) is probably actually False Bay.] Other trips were to Shaw Island, Ship Island, Stuart Island, Waldron Island, the Sucias, Orcas Island and Victoria. Nearly all activities are out of doors that year.

1905 - Trevor Kincaid on leave of absence at Harvard University; T. C. Frye in charge of the summer field camp, in the same location as 1904, with everyone sleeping again in "unfloored tents" and with no formal classes. As in 1904, a small boat is used for dredging using a hand winch and a dredge built by Charles McKay of Friday Harbor. Much of the material collected is sent away to specialists for identification so that the fauna and flora might be known and described.

1906 - Trevor Kincaid in charge. Summer field studies move to an abandoned cannery (out of operation for lack of guaranteed 15,000 gallons of water per day) in Friday Harbor for 1906-1908, just south of the present ferry landing, at the site of the modern Cannery Landing shopping pier. Activities continue to be centered on collection and identification of biological specimens and the cannery offered not only protection from the elements, but lots of room for drying, mounting, pressing and drawing specimens. Classes in marine zoology and botany were offered, both consisting of elementary taxonomy and morphology; there was not much scientific equipment.

1907 - T. C. Frye in charge. Frye encouraged scientists and students from many institutions to attend the six week summer session held at the abandoned P. A. F. Cannery. A group of 17 from the University of Chicago stopped by the station for a week in July on their way to Alaska. Two or three-day student camping field trips to Cypress Island, Anacortes, and Kanaka Bay.

Well-attended (150 people) public picnic ending with 5 gallons of ice cream was held July 20 at Military Point (elsewhere called Point Caution) for both townies and lab personnel in honor of the university summer school that has now been operating at Friday Harbor for 4 summers; Captains Bugge and Tulloch ferried everyone to the site.

Trevor Kincaid visits briefly and tells the Friday Harbor Journal newspaper of his interest in establishing a marine station on the military reserve at Point Caution.

1908 - Six week summer session; T. C . Frye Director. Courses offered are Field Zoology taught by Mr. Harold Holcomb, Field Botany (marine and terrestrial) taught by Dr. Robert Wylie of the University of Iowa, and Elementary Zoology and Elementary Botany, both taught by Mr. Charles Chambers of Pacific University. Expenses for the summer are estimated to be $45 (laboratory and instructional charges $13, 6 weeks board $21, tent rental $5, laundry $2, incidentals $4). The school is held in the P. A. F. cannery buildings and the little steamer Columbia is chartered for transportation and dredging. The steamer Crescent, belonging to the Seattle Oyster Company, replaces the inadequate Columbia mid-term. There are 20 students, male and female, all experienced teachers in public schools or colleges - about half are from Washington and half are from Iowa. Overnight camping field trip to Mt. Constitution, three nights to Kanaka Bay, and a day trip to Waldron Island and Flat Top Island. Field trip to Bellingham to witness the operation of salmon canning.

T. C. Frye marries Else Anthen, former Friday Harbor schoolteacher, on June 30, 1908 in Seattle at the home of her parents.

Friday Harbor resident Julia Frits, age 23, is among the students. Her father John Frits was San Juan County Auditor and her uncle Virgil Frits edited the local Journal newspaper. Julia made and pressed a fairly extensive collection of terrestrial plants that summer, identifications provided by T. C. Frye. Julia married Albert Jensen, who founded Jensen’s boatyard and marina, in 1912 and became a long time school teacher in Friday Harbor, eventually becoming the Superintendent of Schools of San Juan County. Her family remembers Julia as an excellent gardener. In the fall of 1966, aged 81, Mrs. Julia Frits Jensen presented Eugene Kozloff, the first year-round resident Associate Director of the Labs who moved to Friday Harbor in late summer 1966, with her collection of pressed plants from 1908, and they were accessioned into the FHL Herbarium, where they remain a century after being collected. (Personal communication from interviews August 8, 2008, with her son Nourdine Jensen, granddaughter Jeri Ahrehnius, and an earlier conversation with Eugene Kozloff.)

The Friday Harbor Islander newspaper says about the summer school of biology in Friday Harbor: "The county owes much to these unassuming and scholarly gentlemen [Kincaid and Frye], who have been the means of making this wonderfully attractive region known to a large number of cultured ladies and gentlemen, many of them prominent in educational work in large institutions of learning." (February 22, 1908).

In September 1908 it is announced that a professor of Botany at Washington State University in Pullman plans to establish a summer school of biology at Olga on Orcas Island, attracting "many of the teachers of the northwest who are in the habit of spending a week or more at Olga every season."

With the likely reopening of the large cannery in Friday Harbor next year, Trevor Kincaid begins petitioning Washington State federal congressmen and senators to obtain the Point Caution military reserve as the ideal future location of the marine station.

1909 - T. C. Frye comes up to Friday Harbor in April to look after property of the biology class stored in the cannery, presently under lease to P. A. Jensen, and visits the Point Caution military property. The Islander newspaper reports that "the legislature in January memorialized the government to grant [the military reserve] to the university as a site for the school [but] the delay attending it and the lack of any summer water supply and the probable cost of obtaining such a supply led to the consideration and final acceptance of the very generous offer made by Mr. Andrew Newhall to give to the university 200 feet [later 400 feet] of his water front at any point between the cannery "China House", which is partially up on his land, and his private wharf and water station at the place where the summer school was first conducted by Professors Kincaid and Frye" (Islander April 23, 1909).

The cannery building used from 1906 to 1908 is sold and a new site is chosen on Mr. Newhall's land; he donates four acres to UW for construction of a new laboratory. The precise site is chosen for its deep water near shore, convenience to a fresh water supply, and view of Mt. Baker. The Washington legislature appropriates $6000 for new buildings and $500 for equipment.

The six week summer session is divided in half, with the first three weeks at the Friday Harbor site ("Idlewild") in buildings donated by Captain Andrew Newhall augmented by tents (including a large rented tent set up on Mr. Newhall's dock as the dining room, and the next three weeks at Olga. Nine accredited courses taught during the summer session include Marine Zoology; Marine Botany; Animal Ecology and Invertebrate Embryology. The station attracts students from 13 states and 2 foreign countries; representing 14 colleges and universities and 9 other institutions, with a total attendance of 39 for 1909. A series of evening lectures was opened to the general public and given in the Methodist church in Friday Harbor; announcements for the lectures were posted in town on a bulletin board in the window of Mr. Driggs' store. The lab personnel are reluctant to move to Olga at the end of three weeks at Friday Harbor, but an agreement made between University of Washington and Washington State College at Pullman dictated this program for the summer of 1909. Washington State College erected special "commodious temporary quarters" at Olga for occupancy during the second half of the summer. A number of the students and instructors return to spend more time at the site near Friday Harbor at the end of the session. The dislocation of everyone, combined with a rainy summer, left everyone feeling that this had been an unsuccessful plan. The Olga site was abandoned and the lease allowed to expire the following year when the State Governor refused to support two separate marine stations in the San Juans.

(Trevor Kincaid spends the summer of 1909 doing field research on the Crimean peninsula near the Black Sea for the US Department of Agriculture, looking for another parasite for gypsy moth control.)

After the political problems at the summer school during the summer of 1909, the University of Washington announces in August 1909 that investigators and students from all institutions will be welcome and treated equally at the new facility in Friday Harbor (Islander newspaper. August 20, 1909). Trevor Kincaid indicates in a personal memoir ("The Adventures of an Omnologist" written by Trevor Kincaid mainly for his family when he was a very old man ­ from Marjorie Kincaid in 2001) that Frye turned the administration of the station over to Kincaid after "for reasons for which he [Frye] was not responsible a turmoil developed," presumably referring to whatever happened at Olga that summer.

Kincaid's Directorship (1910-1914)

1910 - Trevor Kincaid is appointed as the first official director of the Puget Sound Marine Station. An advisory governing council is established consisting of faculty from several universities and colleges with interest in the station, but the University of Washington provides all operating funds for the station.

Construction of the Puget Sound Marine Station building begins in April 1910 on the Newhall property. It is a 30' x 75' two-and-a-half story building on the shore of Friday Harbor south of the center of town, overhanging the water on heavy concrete piers, so that supplies could be directly delivered by boat. The main floor contains the laboratory for general zoology and botany, two darkrooms, the office and a storeroom (Dr. David Damkaer, copepodology historian, of Monroe, Washington, is presently in possession of the unfinished interior door stenciled OFFICE, with its original hardware, that presumably dates back to 1910, from this original Puget Sound Biological Station at the Newhall site. This door must carry countless long-extinguished handprints of Directors Kincaid and Frye and the many students who sought their advice in the early years.); the second story contains a lecture room, small research rooms, and a supply room; the attic is used for a store room and care of botanical material. Work-boat Clutha is purchased for the marine station. The facility this year included 22 tents with board floors and sides and a small wooden dining hall. The building is plumbed with salt water (pumps not working in 1910) and with fresh spring water, which is gravity fed, and is wired for electric lighting in July 1910. Two large aquaria that were used in 1909 at the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle are installed in the laboratory. (Note that this old lab building still exists, several times remodeled by 2000, on the Friday Harbor waterfront, where it is now known as Capron's Landing. It changed ownership yet again in the summer of 2004.)

Six week official summer session, but there is sufficient interest that the facility stays open through the entire summer, nearly until UW opens again in Seattle for the fall term. Seven courses are taught to 27 students - the total number of people at the laboratory for the summer numbers 50. The courses taught were Ecology (Kincaid), Embryology (Baumgartner), Elementary Zoology (Hartman and Osterud), Algology (Gardner), Systematic Botany (Rigg), Elementary Cryptogamic Botany (Moodie), and Collecting Methods (Howard). The shrimp steamer Alta with captain Harry Haines is chartered for the season and a new dredge is purchased. Field trips include to East Sound, Mt. Constitution, Neal Island, Sucia Island, Stuart Island, and Roche Harbor. In addition to teaching, the scientists are making collections of marine organisms for display and exchange with other institutions throughout the world; a collection of photographs of marine animals is also being accumulated. A 16-foot "devil fish" (squid or octopus) is collected during dredging operations in July, reported in the Friday Harbor newspaper. It is considered the most successful summer yet at the Puget Sound Marine Station and already there is interest in a year-round facility. The Friday Harbor Journal (August 11, 1910) declares: "This school means much to Friday Harbor. Even as a school of but a few weeks per year, as at present, it is of great value to the town and to the islands. It brings among us a most desirable class of people ­ educational people from all parts of the United States."

1911 - A second, 40' x 60' two-story building is built in June and July, just uphill from the laboratory, with dining hall downstairs and a new lecture hall upstairs; it also serves as a social center. Phifer and Phifer (1930) recall that "Perhaps the dearest memories of those attending the Station during the next 13 years revolve about this great room with its huge, rough stone fireplace, and the rude front balcony from which one could gaze across the water and neighboring islands to the ever-changing colors and shadows on Mount Baker and the Cascade range. In this room students and professors gathered as one large family to eat at the rough 12-foot tables with their long benches, to study from the books of the gradually increasing library, to listen to the evening lectures, or to romp at Friday night parties or the annual Stunt-Nite. All lived in tents perched on the slope, girls on one side of the dining hall and boys on the other, but these tents were floored and boarded half-way up. The beds were wobbly and the mattresses lumpy, but who cared? Everyone entered into the simple life whole-heartedly."  The old Dining Hall, along with the original Laboratory building, has seen many owners and many changes over the past century. In 2008, it still stands above the old Lab, on Harrison Street, much modified and painted a bright, light blue, divided into several separate apartments.

One two-room cottage is built for a family with small children. A new float is also built at the lab for the unloading of specimens. The main laboratory building now has an office, stockroom and general laboratories on the ground floor; the second story has research rooms, lecture hall and supply department, and the attic is fitted up as a store room and drying loft for botanical material. Running sea water and fresh water are available in all parts of the building. There are more than 40 tents with board floors and walls; they cost $5 each to rent for the summer session.

Six week summer session includes 6 courses: Ecology (Kincaid), Embryology of Invertebrates (Baumgartner), Elementary Zoology (Duncanson), Research in Zoology (Kincaid), Algology (Rigg), and Elementary Botany (Sweetser) taught to 64 students (18 of these from UW). The steamer Violet from Hood's Canal has been chartered for daily dredging trips; there is also a launch for transporting parties to various collecting grounds, and a number of smaller boats for shore collecting. Field trips are planned to Orcas Island and Mount Constitution, Kanaka Bay, Stuart, Waldron, and Sucia Islands. A summer evening lecture series includes talks open to the public. Seventy-five people attend the marine station, some staying until the end of August; Director Trevor Kincaid is the last to leave, on about August 30.

1912 - A governing council with representatives from several institutions continues to serve to advise Director Kincaid. Dr. Kincaid arrives June 3 to ready the facility for the summer session, receiving large quantities of freight, provisions and material including a new $100 steel range for the kitchen, in anticipation of the largest year yet at the marine station, and to supervise construction of additional tent platforms and a second small cottage. One hundred twenty people (75 students) carry out scientific work at the station in the six week summer session of 1912, with 28 from the University of Kansas, 15 from UW, 12 from University of Oregon and 11 from Northwestern University.

The Friday Harbor Journal says about the marine station: "It is an institution Friday Harbor should feel proud of and should foster by making it as pleasant as possible for the directors and students. Considered from an advertising point-of-view, it is one of the best mediums the islands could wish for" (April 11, 1912).

1913 - Six week summer session. Ten additional tents have been erected (the facility is described by the Friday Harbor Journal as "a veritable city of tents") and a contract is let for construction of an additional laboratory. By July there are 108 persons at the station, including 60 students (35 women and 25 men); 25 of the visitors hail from Kansas. The steamer Violet is in use for the third summer. On July 4, the residents of the station divided into two groups, with about half making a circuit of Shaw Island and stopping at Olga for "eats" and fireworks; the others attended a clambake at Newhall's Lagoon. Overnight field trips to Waldron and Sucia Islands, Kanaka Bay, and East Sound were enjoyed. The annual trip to Mt. Constitution included being entertained at the "palatial home of Robert Moran at Rosario." Charles McKay, an old pioneer on San Juan Island entertained 17 of the students in August, telling stories of the early days on the island. An evening lecture series was open to the public, with notices of the lectures posted at the Friday Harbor Post Office.

Trevor Kincaid is in charge of a government-sponsored project to plant "a large number of [East coast] lobsters" in San Juan waters.

State Representative Dr. Capron lobbies hard for a road to be built to serve the marine station and a bill is passed by both houses appropriating $3500 for the purpose, but it is vetoed by the Governor. By July, the town of Friday Harbor is considering building a road from Friday Harbor to beyond the Newhall property, which unfortunately must bisect the marine station grounds as the only practical location for such a road, taking nearly an acre of the property.

1914 - Trevor Kincaid resigns as Director of the Puget Sound Marine Station, finding it too difficult to deal with the governing council. Under Kincaid's directorship, the primary goal of the station has been to offer class work in biology to teachers and to university students, and secondarily to continue biological exploration of the region.

Frye's Directorship (1914-1930)

1914 - Theodore Christian Frye is appointed Director. Courses taught by 7 faculty members, representing four institutions, include Ecology and Botany, and are attended by 43 students coming from 9 institutions; total persons attending the session numbered 73 (39 women and 34 men). A water main is laid from the "Paxton system" in town, connecting to the marine station buildings. An evening public lecture is given by Dr. Edmondson of the University of Oregon, for which there is a charge of 10 and 15 cents. The session closes in early August and is described as being "one of the most prosperous sessions in the history of the school," with "more research work done for publication than in all the ten previous years of the station's history put together" (The Friday Harbor Journal).

Clearing for the marine station road, known as Permanent Highway No. 2 in August, but renamed the Jensen-Newhall Road the following year, commences in late August; the road is passable by late September, but is still only one-quarter complete by December. (This Friday Harbor street is now known as Warbass Way.)

1915 - Six week summer session. Fourteen new tent platforms and 4 new rowboats are added to the facilities. By late July, there is quite a bit of concern about the sulphurous nature of the fresh water supplied to the marine station as well as to the rest of Friday Harbor, but extensive testing reveals the water to be safe, if unpalatable.

Director Frye writes to new University of Washington President Suzzallo on Sept. 7, 1915, in his report on the summer session of 1915: "The results of the summer might be summed up as follows: (a) more enthusiasm among biology teachers. Those who knew about dead animals now know something about live ones [dead and alive underlined by Frye], (b) Personal acquaintance with good workers. One knows people better in six weeks of camp life than in four years of classroom contact." (Gretchen Lambert, longtime present-day visitor to the labs, comments: "This has always been so true of FHL.")

First issue of the seven volumes of Puget Sound Marine Station Publications (later called Publications Puget Sound Biological Station) T. C. Frye, editor, is published, as a means to make better known the institution and the kinds of research going on here.

Important intertidal field sites in San Juan County used by marine station researchers in the early years (compare to those listed for 2003) include on San Juan Island: shoreline of Friday Harbor and Brown Island, Minnesota Reef near Turn Point, Point Caution, Argyle Lagoon and Argyle Creek, shore of North Bay and Griffin Bay, Cattle Point, False Bay and Kanaka Bay, Eagle Point and Eagle Cove, Grandmother's Cove, Deadman Bay, Mitchell Bay, Pile Point, Westcott Bay, Jakle's Lagoon, Jackson Beach, and Edwards Reef; also Turn Rock, Turn Island, Point George shoreline and Broken Point on Shaw Island, south end of Shaw Island, Crescent Beach in East Sound on Orcas Island, Iceberg Point and Spencer Spit on Lopez Island, Sucia Island. Important subtidal locations used for scientific dredging by the marine students and researchers include Salmon Bank off southern tip of San Juan Island, Griffin Bay on the east side of San Juan Island, East Sound and West Sound on Orcas Island, Pole Pass between Orcas and Crane Island, Upright Channel north of Flat Point west of Lopez Island, from Point Caution to Eureka east of San Juan Island, Mosquito Pass between San Juan Island and Henry Island, off south shore of Canoe Island, "Potato Patch" south of Olga, and the passage between Sentinel Island and Speiden Island (extracted from the Puget Sound Marine Station Publications).

1916 - Six week summer session; in addition to the usual set of courses, there is also a field course in geology, which visits Glacier National Park in July. The 82 persons enrolled at the station include 55 women; in addition there are 21 investigators working at the station for the summer (10 botanists, 10 zoologists and 1 chemist). Thirty colleges are represented.

Electrical wires are strung to the marine station in June.

T.C. Frye writes a letter to UW President Suzzalo listing problems with the Marine Station at its present location, including the very steep hillside location, whose connecting paths became slippery and muddy in the rain; nearby sewage and cannery effluent polluting the water and necessitating sea water intake 1/5 mile away from the lab; site with only 400 feet of shoreline was insufficient for field experimentation studies; site so small that some of the tents and buildings were on adjacent property with only verbal consent of the owners (Dana Read, p. 8).

1917 - Six week summer session includes courses in Invertebrate Morphology, Animal Ecology, Invertebrate Embryology, Algology, Systematic Botany, and Plant Ecology. Cost for the six-week session is about $90, including rental of research space, station fee, tent and fittings, board, books and incidentals. The majority of students enrolled are women.

Trevor Kincaid marries University of Washington student Louise Pennell shortly after she receives her master's degree in Zoology, on August 23, 1917 in Seattle and they honeymoon at Mt. Rainier and at the Biological Station in Friday Harbor, where they sightsee the shorelines in his small motorboat, the Ha Ha (Guberlet, 1975).

The Regents of the University of Washington apply to the U.S. War Department for it to cede to the University the Point Caution tract of 484 acres on San Juan Island, which was finally accomplished in 1921 by an act of Congress.

1917-18 - During World War I, the name of the station is changed to Puget Sound Biological Station. The Puget Sound Marine Station was renamed because mail was being confused between the biological laboratory and the Marine Station and Navy Yard at Port Townsend and Bremerton!

1919 - Six week summer teaching session and as usual, some researchers and students stay on after the end of the formal term.

1920 - Director Frye’s 1920 advertisement flyer for the station describes life as follows:
“While life at the Station varies somewhat from year to year, it is in general a busy but simple one. There are forenoon and afternoon classes in the laboratories, on the seashore, or in the lecture-room. Some of the classes work mostly along the shores, others mostly in the laboratories. It is expected that a shrimp trawler will be hired, and in that case students will be given an opportunity to see how living things are brought up from far below the surface. The rowboats are open to students, and are much used in the gathering of material for laboratory work or for observations along the shore. The evening bonfire talks are well attended. Some go bathing, but the water is too cold except in shallow bays where it is quiet. The chief pleasure, however, should be in the work itself with animals and plants in their natural haunts. The daily routine is work. The life out of doors in fresh air leaves one refreshed at the close of the season; wholly different in this respect from the usual school.”

During the summer session, there are about 150 students in tents on the steep hillside on Warbass Way. The cannery is operating nearby and all of the offal is dumped into the bay. It is obvious that a better and more pristine site is needed. Cost for each student is $60 for the six-week term.

In September 1920, UW President Suzzallo and several other UW officials, together with Director Frye, spend a week in Friday Harbor looking over the Point Caution Military Reservation, on which the new marine station is expected to be located (the Friday Harbor Journal).

1921 - Six week summer session held at the Newhall (Warbass Way) site in Friday Harbor, opening June 21, with approximately 50 students.

On August 23, 1921, President Warren G. Harding signs House Resolution 1475: "for the use of the University of Washington, some four hundred and eighty four acres of land on the east side of San Juan Island." The land is to be used by the University of Washington for "a biological station and general university research purposes." (As of 2004 with digital correction and a resurvey of the west line, the 484 acres now measures 476 acres, according to the San Juan County Assessor’s Office.)

1922 - Six-week summer session with 89 students enrolled in courses; cost is $60 per person for six weeks. Trevor Kincaid teaches one of the zoology classes; Dr. Harold Kylin, world expert Swedish botanist, is also present for several weeks. Attendance at the station exceeds that of any previous year.

Mr. J.B. Hamilton, engineer, prepares a topographical survey of the new biological station grounds on the Point Caution military reserve. Without a supply of water during the summer, the move to the new site requires installation of water pipes from town before classes can take place there.

Under Frye's directorship, the goals of the station have been to bring together students, graduates and investigators in biology, to give grade school teachers an active interest in biology so that they can pass along a love of the out-of-doors to their students, and to foster research (Friday Harbor Journal December 28, 1922).

1923 - The last summer session at the Newhall/Capron's Landing site. Attendance at the six week summer session is larger than usual, with most continuing to live in tents for the summer.

A party of UW officials visits the new site on the military reserve in mid-July to plan for construction of the new buildings. The first building is to be 24' x 60', constructed on a unit plan, so that additional buildings can be added as attendance increases and/or funds become available. By late July, workmen have finished laying the pipeline from the town water main to the building site on the military reserve. In August workmen are getting the grounds in condition to begin two laboratory buildings and a barge load of building materials from Seattle arrives at the new site in September.

The San Juan Archipelago, "salt waters and the beds and shores of the islands constituting San Juan County and of Cypress Island in Skagit County," is designated as a marine biological preserve by the legislature and Governor of the State of Washington, and the Director of the Puget Sound Biological Station is given responsibility for the preservation of its resources "except when gathered for human food, and except, also, the plant Nereocystis commonly called "kelp"" (Washington R.C.W. 28B.20.320). (This "preserve" designation occurred two years after Robert Moran of Orcas Island donated 2700 acres on Orcas to the recently-established Washington State Park system.)

1924 - Construction of the new biological station continues in the present location. This includes two laboratory buildings (now Labs 4 and 5), then a dining hall (designed by the well known architect, Carl F. Gould, who is concurrently re-shaping the University's main campus in Seattle) holding a library on either end and with cement-floored kitchen and lavatories on the north side . "The laboratories are one-story structures of stuccoed hollow tile and red tile roofs. Each measures about 24 by 56 feet and consists of professor's office, storeroom, research room, and general laboratory. Facing the windows of the latter are large built-in tables which will accommodate 20 students. Down the center of the room is a row of concrete sinks with running fresh and salt water" (Phifer and Phifer, 1930). A caretaker's cottage, to be occupied year round, is completed in late August at a cost of $3000, equipped with all modern conveniences. Justine is the research vessel. (Labs 1, 2, 3, 6, and Lecture Hall are built 1925 and 1928 (see below). Cost: $75,000 to build the whole station.

The new Puget Sound Biological Station is occupied at the present location and the first summer courses are taught there. The six-week summer session accommodates 150 students and teachers. Most of the tents and living quarters have been moved onto the new grounds from the old site in April and May, totaling 104 tent platforms. The dining hall is not completed by the beginning of the session, so tables are initially set up outside. There are so many students that some classes have to work at the old laboratories and are ferried back and forth across the harbor. Attendance of nearly 200 is expected by the end of the summer, nearly doubling the previously largest enrollment of 110. Dr. John Guberlet is present as the Invertebrate Embryology instructor; Dr. Harold Kylin of Sweden, internationally known botanist, has returned this year as the Botany instructor; Dr. Victor Shelford of University of Illinois is teaching Animal Ecology, Dr. Brode of Whitman College is teaching a course in General Zoology, and Professor Leona Sundquist of Bellingham Normal is teaching normal school Botany (Guberlet, 1975). In addition to the traditional science classes, the marine station hosts a class in Landscape Painting and Drawing taught by UW Art Professor John Butler. A gala reception is held in the dining hall for the opening of the new facilities.

Social activities established this first summer at the present location sound nearly identical to those still traditional for summer FHL visitors: baseball games, ping pong, use of an old upright piano in the Dining Hall, late afternoon walks to "heaven" at the north end of the property, rowboat trips into town, and even a masquerade dance that sounds eerily similar to the Invertebrate Ball which now occurs annually, in which "ingenuity was at a premium" (Guberlet, 1975).

1924-1928? - For several years the old Puget Sound Marine Station on the other side of the bay is still in operation, as the space is needed, and the research vessel, the Medea, owned by Captain Louie Scribner, serves as a water taxi between new and old.

1925 - Two more laboratories (now Labs 2 and 3) built in the spring of 1925 (Phifer and Phifer, 1930); Lab 5 is known as the Embryology Laboratory; Lab 3 is known as the Botany Laboratory. Six week summer session opens with 8 instructors and 88 students. (One of the students, Miss Della Patch, becomes a memorable character still teaching biology at Claudia Mills' junior high school in Seattle in 1963. Another 1925 summer student, Miss Belle Stevens, went on to receive her PhD and taught biology for many years at Seattle's Roosevelt High School, receiving many of the students who had been taught at nearby Nathan Eckstein Junior High by Della Patch.) A series of lectures at the station is open to the public and advertised in the local newspaper.

1926 - Summer session expands from six weeks to nine weeks, "a step towards keeping the Station open for work as long as the weather permits" (Phifer and Phifer, 1930). Classes include Animal Morphology (Dr. Kincaid), Parasitology (Dr. Guberlet), Forest Botany (Dr. Kirkwood), Animal Ecology (Dr. Shelford), Botany for teachers (Professor Sundquist), Field Zoology including birds (Dr. Wolcott). A weekly lecture series at the station is open to the public and advertised in the local newspaper.

In September a crew is employed improving University Way, the road into the marine station, by "blasting out rock ledges and eliminating many of the sharp turns in the road" so that it will be usable by students driving to the station in cars (Friday Harbor Journal).

In a move parallel to that in 1921 giving the University of Washington the military reserve in Friday Harbor, 63 acres of military reservation on Lopez Island, across San Juan Channel from Friday Harbor, is abandoned to San Juan County for a public park (eventually called Odlin Park after the Anacortes resident who lobbied for this action) by patent signed by President Calvin Coolidge in 1926 and later in 1929 by patent signed by President Herbert Hoover (John Goekler, Islands Weekly newspaper, November 16, 2004).

1927 - Thirty-five hundred copies of the bulletin of the Puget Sound Biological Station are printed in late winter for distribution to universities and colleges throughout the country.

In the spring, improvements to University Way are completed and it is resurfaced, making it "one of the scenic drives on the Island" (Friday Harbor Journal).

The Laboratories are open from June 10 to September 30 with a nine-week course session. Once again, an evening lecture series is open to the public.

George Hitchings, an undergraduate doing field work with Professor Tommy Thompson, studies chemistry of seawater from Argyle Lagoon. This work leads to Hitchings' first scientific publication. In 1988 he is awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine. He is the only undergraduate alum of the University of Washington to win a Nobel Prize.

late 1920s - (From an account of life at the labs in the Friday Harbor Journal, April 1, 1981 by Anita Hanson Garrett, Friday Harbor native who spent three summers at PSBS as a student:) Students slept in tents and had meals in the new Dining Hall. The Medea, a fish boat chartered from Louie Scribner of Friday Harbor, with the assistance of his son Leslie, helped with dredging and other collecting expeditions. Floats at the Laboratories contained live boxes for holding specimens... Professor Frye's daughter Elizabeth took every available class... Dr. Frye encouraged weekend dances and parties, midweek lectures and programs by talented and knowledgeable faculty and students, and weekend trips to points of interest, often with students riding on a barge towed by the Medea... The lab became known as the "bug station" and Lab personnel were known as "bug hunters" to those in town because they were frequently seen collecting "flying fauna with nets on the ends of long poles."

1928 - Three more buildings (now Labs 1 and 6 and the Lecture Hall) and the Director's cottage are built, totaling 10 buildings on the grounds; at this point there are also 100 tents, and "20-odd" rowboats. Dr. Frye tells the San Juan Island Commercial Club that the present investment by the state in buildings and equipment at the marine station totals approximately $100,000 (Friday Harbor Journal).

Frye's objectives at the station are described as threefold: "First, to instruct grade school teachers in the fundamentals of biology so that they in turn may create and foster interest in biology in the children under them; second, to create an opportunity for those interested to receive instruction in advanced undergraduate studies pertaining to marine biology; third, to make laboratory space and equipment available for investigators who wish to work on marine biological problems" (Pfifer and Pfifer, 1930)

1929 - Nine week summer session with total attendance of 210, of which 150 are students, once again exceeding all previous years. Dr. Thomas Thompson is again among the summer researchers. An Open House is held for the public on August 9.

The Friday Harbor Boy Scouts are now using the old laboratory building on the Newhall site as their meeting place.

1930 - New water pipes are laid deeper in the ground in April 1930 to eliminate the possibility of freezing.

Nine week summer session with courses offered in Animal Morphology, Embryology, Animal Ecology, General Physiology, Botany ­ Diatoms, and Botany ­ Algae. The Medea, with Captain Scribner of Friday Harbor, continues to work daily for the laboratories' classes, arriving at 7:30 am and leaving around 4 pm. Total attendance at the station may be 235 (the number of raspberry ice cream desserts reported by student June Burn in her weekly column for the Friday Harbor Journal called Work and Play at Biological Station in the summer of 1930).

Eighty-eight persons from the lab each pay 85 cents to take the annual overnight trip to Orcas in August, arriving at Olga, hiking up Mt. Constitution where they overnight, and get picked up the next day by the Medea in East Sound after eating "the traditional loganberry sundaes" (June Burn writing for the Friday Harbor Journal).

Professor Frye resigns as Director, after losing a largely-political confrontation with Professor Tommy Thompson, who had obtained Rockefeller money to develop Oceanography both at Seattle and at FH. Frye never again visited the Labs, which he had done much, perhaps more than any, to develop.

Thompson's Directorship (1930-1951)

1930 - The Biological Station becomes part of the newly created University of Washington Oceanographic Laboratories. The University of Washington receives a grant for oceanography from the Rockefeller Foundation of $250,000, of which $50,000 is earmarked for the Friday Harbor station. FHL was to be the third branch for UW Oceanography, which would be comprised of the Seattle campus facility, an ocean-going research vessel, and FHL (renamed as the Oceanographic Laboratories).

Professor Thomas Gordon (Tommy) Thompson, a marine chemist, is appointed Director of FHL and Lyman Phifer is appointed Assistant Director and resident scientist. A teaching staff is appointed for the Laboratories at Friday Harbor, composed of Clinton Utterback - Oceanographic Physics, John Guberlet and Robert Miller - Zoology, Rex Robinson and Tommy Thompson - Oceanographic Chemistry, George Rigg and Lyman Phifer - Botany. Summer classes for teachers are no longer offered.

1931 - The last issue of the seven volumes of Publications Puget Sound Biological Station, T. C. Frye, editor, is published on March 30, 1931.

A quit claim deed signed by the State Governor in March conveys the old Laboratory property back to the Andrew Newhall family.

New equipment arrives at the Oceanographic Laboratories as it is refurbished by the new director. Pilings are driven for new floats in May; a new automatic oil-burner kitchen range is installed in the Dining Hall in June. The "cantilever float" is under construction at "Point Caution" (north side of the mouth of Friday Harbor) in mid-August. Summer session at the Oceanographic Laboratories runs for 9 weeks, although some stay beyond the close of teaching. Tours of the facilities, given by the wives of several of the scientists are offered by appointment for the public. An evening lecture series is also open to the public and advertised weekly in the newspaper. Labbies skunk locals 14-2 at an "indoor baseball game" in July; a later rematch ends 11-11.

1932 - An automatic tide gauge is installed in January on the cantilever float by the US Coast and Geodetic Survey. A new building funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, the boatswain’s locker where the main lab now stands, is dedicated June 15.

Summer session at the Oceanographic Laboratories runs from June 16 to August 17 and has 75 persons in attendance ­ less than originally expected due to the economic Depression.

The 75-foot motorship Catalyst is launched in early June as the "floating laboratory" of the Oceanographic Laboratories, with sleeping accommodations for 12 scientists and a crew of four; its cruising radius is 3500 miles. Designed by Seattle marine architects Rowland and Strickland especially for oceanographic work, its total cost is $60,000 of which $45,000 was provided by the Rockefeller Foundation.

1933 - Summer session at the Oceanographic Laboratories runs from June 14 to August 15 with about 60-75 persons in attendance ­ the numbers in attendance continue to be low due to the Depression; about 30 remain after the teaching session ends. An evening lecture series is open to the public and advertised in the newspaper. The wives of the faculty offered a tea and tour of the Laboratories in July.

1934 - Summer session opens with 120 persons in attendance and includes a 9-week oceanography class for teachers of science in elementary and secondary schools, called Science of the Sea. An evening lecture series is open to the public and visitors are urged to come tour the station anytime by first making an appointment. An Open House is held for the public on August 8, with students in each laboratory building pointing out interesting features of the animals there.

Oceanography Professor Utterback suffers a cracked vertebra while working on the Catalyst, when he is hit across the back with the boom. The wooden "Utterback Shack" is later built for Dr. Utterback whose subsequent health problems required him to have something slightly more substantial than a tent for sleeping. (This shack provides a home for many subsequent FHL scientists and is remodeled several times over the next five decades before it is finally replaced in 1997.)

Lyman Phifer, resident scientist, files his first of many weekly weather reports in the Friday Harbor Journal on November 15, 1934.

1935 - A new dock pier is completed in March in front of Lab 5; replacing a series of beach-anchored wooden floats that ran out to pilings in the same area. From shore to deep water, the dock is 204 feet long and sufficiently wide at the face for a truck to turn around without difficulty. On one side of the approach is a large float to accommodate the station's rowboats, and on the other side is a live-box float for specimens.

Summer session runs from June 19 to August 21 with about double the number of students as in 1934. Courses offered include Penetration of Light (Utterback), Shipworms (Miller), Vitamin Content in Marine Organisms (Norris), Marine Bacteriology (Henry), Distribution of Marine Animals (Phifer), Microscopic Plants of the Sea (Rigg), Chemistry of the Sea (Thompson and Robinson), and Introduction to the Science of the Sea for teachers. Two boats, the Catalyst and the Medea, work in support of the station. An evening lecture series is open to the public; an Open House is held for the public on the evening of August 7 following a baseball game between the town of Friday Harbor and Ocean Lab teams.

Victor E. Shelford publishes in Ecological Monographs a description of the benthic communities of the San Juan Islands. The spectacular marine flora and fauna of the region are becoming known and are drawing students and investigators from all over the country during the summer.

Twenty-five boys from Civilian Conservation Corps Company #1230 arrive from Moran State Park on Orcas Island in October to do some projects beautifying and cleaning up the grounds of the Laboratories. They build stone bulkheads (that remain in service in 2010 after some repair in 2007) to hold up the bank below the laboratory buildings.

1936 - Muriel Guberlet (wife of FHL Professor John Guberlet) writes the book Animals of the Seashore: the Common Seashore Animals of the Pacific Northwest, published by Metropolitan Press of Portland, Oregon; it is revised and reprinted in 1949 and 1962, a local classic.

1938 - Libbie Hyman spends her second summer at Friday Harbor, having first been here as a student at the Warbass Way site. She later says that, "on the whole, [she] likes this place the best of any marine station on our coasts." She soon begins (in 1940) publishing her encyclopedic 6-volume treatise on Invertebrate Zoology, which remains in demand today, some 65 years later, by university-level teachers of the subject.

1941 - A new flagpole is erected on the FHL campus with a special ceremony on June 21.

The Marine Station has already by this time acquired the local moniker, the "Bug Station;" the young daughter of John Dixon, resident maintenance and grounds supervisor, bearing the nickname "Bugs" around town, as the Station's representative.

1942 - Classes are suspended at the marine station for WWII. Director Tommy Thompson takes a leave of absence to join the war effort as Lieutenant Colonel in the War Department Civilian Protection School in Seattle in August 1942, later moving to the Chemical Warfare Board in Maryland, then to Utah, and eventually overseas. US Coast Guard officers arrive in Friday Harbor the same month to ready the Laboratories for training of young Coast Guard servicemen. Lyman Phifer, Assistant Director of the Laboratories, secures a commission as Coast Guard Lieutenant J. G. and John Dixon, FHL custodian of grounds and buildings, receives a commission as warrant officer. Both are assigned to active service at the new Coast Guard Station, retaining longtime committed FHL staff at the new facility, which because of World War II reverted to the Coast Guard on August 22, 1942, as provided for in its original conveyance to the University of Washington. Phifer maintains weather and oceanographic records at the station during the war.

The lab buildings are converted to barracks, numbered 1-6 with the system still in use today. The staff at the Coast Guard Station consists of about 20 officers including instructors, cooks and clerical force, with about 10 families. It is anticipated that the training course will be about 6 weeks long for groups of about 60 recruits at a time. Professor and Mrs. Trevor Kincaid pack up for home in late August, having spent the summer at FHL, their last until the war ends. The Catalyst is taken over by the federal government as part of the war effort, patrolling the Aleutian Islands for Japanese submarines with a machine gun mounted on top of the pilot house, and is not returned to the university, but is sold as surplus by the U.S. Navy to an Alaskan mining company. In December, the Friday Harbor airplane observing post (a building) is moved to the (FHL) Coast Guard Station. In a 1979 interview, Lyman Phifer mentioned that there was a place where the Coast Guard could place smooth bore cannons to protect Friday Harbor in case of invasion (article by Theresa Morrow, the Island Record, July 25, 1979) - this may explain the small rectangular concrete foundation on the knoll between Labs 5 and 6.

1943 - FHL Coast Guard station is visited in April by Professor Utterback, Acting Director of the UW Oceanographic Laboratories during the absence of Director Tommy Thompson, away on active military duty. In July Lyman Phifer, longtime FHL scientist, takes over as Commander at the Coast Guard Station. In December, Phifer is sent to Seattle and J.G. Dixon takes command of the training station.

The Gear Locker is built.

1944 - Tommy Thompson sends a letter to the newspaper editor in Friday Harbor (renewing his subscription) from his posting with the Chemical Warfare Board in Utah, signing off "Best of luck to you and all of my friends in the finest place this side of heaven."

J.G. Dixon sent to Seattle for assignment and Lieutenant Cameron arrives to take charge of the Coast Guard training station.

The airplane observation post building is moved off FHL grounds in July to San Juan Park to be used as a dressing room for bathers.

1945 - Dixy Lee Ray joins the UW Department of Zoology, and begins a significant career of study, teaching, and research in marine biology at the Labs and at the Seattle campus. She develops an introductory field course in marine biology at FHL, and for several years in the late 1950s develops and hosts a very well-received Seattle TV program explaining marine biology to the public. Dr. Ray went on to become Director of the Seattle Science Center, a member of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (originally appointed by President Richard Nixon, and eventually becoming chair of the A.E.C.), the first (federal) Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Oceans, International Environment and Scientific Affairs (appointed by President Gerald Ford) and finally, Governor of Washington State.

1946 - The Oceanographic Laboratories are turned back to the University of Washington from the US Coast Guard in early February 1946. John Dixon is discharged and returns from Seattle the same week, overseeing work to change the buildings back to their original condition. Tommy Thompson visits the San Juans in February 1946 after more than 4 years of active military service, staying for a week in February on nearby McConnell Island, which the Thompsons had purchased late in 1945.

In May, Thompson spends several days at the Oceanographic Laboratories with Professor Arden King of the UW Department of Anthropology, preparing for the 1946 summer session, in which Professor King will teach a class of 12 archaeology students in a field course at sites on San Juan Island, the only class in 1946.

1947 - The first full summer session since the war, with Botany, Zoology and Oceanography courses; the UW archaeology course continues to work in the field on San Juan Island. H. Weston Blaser teaches Phycology, with Richard Norris as an undergraduate teaching assistant - Norris's first summer of what proves to be a long association with the Laboratories. The fishing boat Hydah, purchased in 1947 by Cleave Vandersluys, makes several trips to Seattle to transport books and equipment, as well as some of the summer students, from Portage Bay (Seattle) to Friday Harbor.

Use of the rowboats (which dates back to the beginning of the station) continues to be an important pastime, with Brown Island a frequent destination for parties. Rowboat races around Brown Island were also popular.

Lab residents all transported via the Hydah to Director Thompson’s place on McConnell Island for a Fourth of July picnic.

FHL students and faculty are on call and serve as needed as volunteer firefighters in Friday Harbor.

Robert L. Fernald joins the UW Department of Zoology and spends his first summer in residence of the Labs.

Prior to 1948, summer housing for most consists of platform-tents with wooden floors and walls and canvas tents, set up in the area now known as the "bunny lawn" (in reference to the feral European rabbits in residence), near the Utterback Shack.

1948 - Summer session again includes Botany, Zoology and Oceanography courses; the UW archaeology course continues to work in the field on San Juan Island for its third summer.

Director Thompson obtains $10,000 with which ten all-year cottages are constructed; 12 of the platform-tents that these cottages replace are moved up into the woods as more primitive housing, and student dormitories are built.

Director Thompson receives the Alexander Agassiz Gold Medal from the National Academy of Sciences for his original contributions to the science of oceanography.

Friday Harbor volunteer Fire Department forms in partnership between the town and the labs. The town provides the man-power and the Labs provide the "new" tank truck. This fire truck was obtained by Dr. Clifford Barnes from government surplus property, completely overhauled in the UW shops, painted red, and brought up to Friday Harbor in early August.

Arthur H. Whiteley joins the UW Department of Zoology, attracted to University of Washington specifically because of the existence of FHL. Dr. Whiteley together with his graduate students and research associates developed an approach to comparative invertebrate embryology at FHL and Seattle that focused on physiological, biochemical and molecular tools of analysis, including the first published use of DNA-RNA molecular hybridization in analyzing embryonic events. Dr. Whiteley continues to be a presence at FHL more than 60 years after his arrival here.

1950­1951 - Funds for FHL are eliminated from the University of Washington budget by the Legislature. Lloyd Woodburne, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, takes $20,000 from the Athletics budget and restores the FHL budget, preventing closure of FHL.

Director Thompson obtains a gift of a large amount of new industrial Pyrex pipe surplussed from Hanford, with which a very successful all-glass sea water system is constructed, providing continuously running seawater that is free of metallic contamination in every laboratory and thereby making it possible to study certain kinds of organisms and cellular processes in the laboratory at Friday Harbor for the first time. Until then, moderately toxic sea water was delivered to the labs through a galvanized pipe, and uncontaminated sea water had to be collected in glass containers directly from the dock. The glass pipe system revolutionized work at the labs, and along with the very special local marine flora and fauna, helped to attract visiting scientists from all over the world.

1951 - Professor Thompson retires.
The following is excerpted from a brief celebratory bibliography of Tommy Thompson: "Every University has its beloved Professors - scholars and teachers who are inspired with their subject and who, through the force of personality alone, are able to infect others with their enthusiasm and to color the lives of their students. Such a man is Thomas Gordon Thompson, but to his students as well as to numerous scientists throughout the world, there is only one Tommy Thompson. This name identifies one of the world's leading oceanographers and one of the pioneers in the chemistry of the sea. The informality of his personality and his acceptance of this title does not lesson in any way the great respect that is held for his accomplishments. It is a measure of the affection that is felt by all who come in contact with him. ... Part of his charm is the trace of a Brooklynese accent that the years have never completely eroded. ... His inexorable demand for integrity in what is the chemistry student's first real contact with laboratory experiments requiring independent judgment was an object lesson that all will remember. ... Of his publications - some 125 in number - eighty percent are in chemical oceanography. His work and that of his many students provide evidence of efforts to establish the comparative invariance of the composition of sea water in various parts of the world and to elucidate the chemistry of changes that occur in minor elements. ... No account of Tommy would be complete without mention of the "Catalyst" - the 75-foot, diesel-driven floating laboratory that represented an attempt to crowd all possible devices for study of the sea into a minimum volume and to combine them with living quarters and a chemical laboratory. The final result was a trifle top-heavy, which accounted for the great amplitude of roll and the prevalence of mal de mer among the devoted passengers and crew. Tommy - sometimes called "The Admiral" under these circumstances - was a man of courage, the first to master his discomfort and to carry on in the face of adverse winds and waves. Seeing him in oilskins on the somewhat perilous platform hanging over the ship's side, superintending the collection of a water sample from the depths, was to sense his persistent interest in the mystery of the sea." (B. D. Thomas, 1958, Journal of Marine Science 17: 11-22)

Fleming's Directorship (1951-1956)

1951 - Richard H. Fleming is hired by the University to replace Thompson as Director of the Oceanographic Laboratories and to be Chairman of the new Department of Oceanography on the Seattle campus. Recently from Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Office of Naval Research, Fleming is best known as one of the authors of the textbook that defines the discipline of oceanography, The Oceans. By this time a distinction between marine biology, as practiced in Friday Harbor, and oceanography, as practiced in Seattle, begins to form.

Bonneville Power Administration lays the first submarine cable from the mainland for OPALCO (Orcas Power and Light Company, the local electricy co-op), bringing stable, inexpensive electricity to the islands.

1950s - The teaching program at FHL is resumed and redefined with increasing emphasis in organismal biology and less pure oceanography. The pattern developed of bringing scholars from other universities, from the US and abroad, to co-teach with a UW faculty member, thus providing a constant renewal and enrichment of information. The summer session is expanded to ten weeks in length, divided into two, five-week terms.

Joe Connell begins his long-term studies of predator-prey interactions among marine invertebrates on the supporting wall under the cantilever pier on Cantilever Point and at Millport Scotland ­ this is pioneer work in the new field of experimental marine ecology.

1952 - A UW committee is appointed by Dean Lloyd Woodburne to assess the future direction of the Laboratories. The committee finds that the labs should become a full year laboratory, emphasizing marine sciences, and focussed on advanced teaching and research. The Director will need to focus solely on this significant administrative job. With these recommendations the Laboratories enters on a new phase in its development, and becomes the type of facility that presently exists.

Paul Illg joins the faculty of UW Department of Zoology, after serving as curator of invertebrate zoology at the Smithsonian Institution. He becomes a presence at FHL nearly every summer for about four decades and his teaching in invertebrate zoology, research on copepods, and attraction of foreign scientists to FHL greatly strengthened the Labs' contribution to marine science.

1952, 1953 ­ Dr. John Sherman of UW Dept of Geography and Dr. Thomas Griffiths of University of Denver conduct a geography class at FHL, studying San Juan Island, its resources and development.

1953 - Summer public lecture series brings scientific discoveries at the Oceanographic Laboratories to the general public along with staff and students at the labs. The 1953 public lecture series kicks off with a talk by Drs. Sherman and Griffiths (see above) on the geography of San Juan Island.

Colin Hermans begins his long association with FHL as a 16-year old dishwasher in the FHL Dining Hall in the summer of 1953, being promoted to deckhand on the Hydah for Cleave Vandersluys in 1954. He returns as a graduate student studying polychaete worms in the 1960s (at which time his wife Mary is Director Fernald's secretary for two years), takes a job for several decades in central California, and retires to Friday Harbor in the late 1990s.

Russel Zimmer begins his long association with FHL in 1953 as a graduate student of Professor Robert Fernald. He eventually takes a job at University of Southern California, but returns to FHL for many of the next 60 summers, teaching Marine Invertebrate Embryology about 15 times.

1954 - Paul Sund is the first to use SCUBA diving in research at the Friday Harbor Oceanographic Labs, having learned to dive in 1952 as an undergraduate student at UC Santa Barbara. He does a project for the 1954 Advanced Invertebrate Zoology class (taught by Dixy Lee Ray, George Wells and Richard Wood) using SCUBA to correlate invertebrates with bottom substrate and then continues doing research diving for his MS project (1954-1956) on the sea anemone Stomphia, field testing the results of his lab experiments. Cleave Vandersluys, owner of the Hydah and FHL associate since 1947, learns SCUBA diving from Paul Sund and becomes the first commercial SCUBA diver in the area.

Richard Cloney first visits FHL in the summer, before beginning graduate studies with Professor Robert Fernald that fall. Dr. Cloney takes a job on the Faculty of Zoology in 1958 and continues his long association with FHL, teaching Comparative Invertebrate Embryology 17 times over the next four decades.

1956 - Dr. Fleming releases the directorship of the (Friday Harbor) Oceanographic Laboratories to concentrate on the development of the (Seattle campus) Department of Oceanography. From this point on, the Oceanography Department and the Friday Harbor Laboratories flourish along separate lines.

Fernald's Directorship (1956-1972)

1956 - Dr. Robert L. Fernald of the UW Department of Zoology assumes the position of Acting Director of the Oceanographic Laboratories, while a UW committee begins a worldwide search for a new director.

Muriel Guberlet (no longer at FHL, see 1936 entry) writes the book Seaweeds at Ebb Tide, published by University of Washington Press; the first layman's guide to Pacific Northwest seaweeds.

Cleave Vandersluys supplies compressed air for diving at the Friday Harbor Labs and the region. He continues to be the person in charge of the USGS Friday Harbor Tide Gauge on the Cantilever Pier. The gauge, which is not automated, needs to be checked and adjusted daily.

1957 - The first post-war international science symposium is hosted at FHL, organized by Dixy Lee Ray, The proceedings, Marine Boring and Fouling Organisms, is published by UW Press in 1959. The second symposium, Nervous Inhibition, is organized by Ernst Florey in 1960, published by Pergamon Press in 1961. Since then, numerous symposia and scientific conferences have been presented at FHL.

Conversion of duplex units: for several years, canvas-on-wood platform duplex living units had served as rather primitive accommodations for couples and small families. These had been obtained from Army surplus by Tommy Thompson, following WWII. In 1957 these were converted to somewhat less primitive, wood-sided, uninsulated, duplex units with cold water and a woodstove. Some of these 1957-era duplexes serve as humble accommodations until 2004, their final summer, after which they are replaced by new all-season, wooden duplexes.

1958 - The UW Oceanographic Laboratories in Friday Harbor are renamed the UW Friday Harbor Laboratories. Administration of the laboratories is transferred from the Oceanography Department to Graduate Studies at UW.

Norman Jensen of KCTS television in Seattle films a series "Animals of the Seashore" largely in the Friday Harbor area and at FHL. The series, developed and hosted by UW Zoology Professor Dixy Lee Ray, is broadcast nationally on educational TV stations in 1959.

1959 - Robert L. Fernald resigns as Acting Director and is appointed Director of FHL. Aside from the director, the permanent staff of the Laboratories is limited to non-academic personnel - a secretary and a maintenance staff of four. The Director and his secretary move to Friday Harbor in June and back to the Seattle campus at the end of August.

During his tenure, Dr. Fernald encourages UW faculty teaching at FHL to find experts from all over the world to join them in teaching the summer courses, thus bringing a continuous influx of international expertise to the summer curriculum. The Friday Harbor Laboratories becomes a full time, year around, globally attractive marine laboratory. Dr. Fernald's personal contribution by teaching and that of his numerous graduate students was to develop the discipline of comparative invertebrate embryology at the Labs to a level of distinction.

Ed Gross replaces John Dixon as the resident supervisor of the FHL physical plant, with Earl Kiehl as maintenance helper.

Dr. Fu-Shiang Chia, who first came to FHL as a graduate student in 1959 (and has continued to return regularly as teacher and investigator at FHL into the 2000s), describes the atmosphere at that time: "The operation of the labs pretty much followed the established tradition which included emphasis on teaching courses in marine biology, diversity of research projects from independent investigators, multinational students and instructors, free interaction between students and instructors and regular recreational activities such as music, dance, potluck parties and sport."

Mike Neushul, assistant professor in the Botany Department, begins an ambitious program using SCUBA diving for experimental studies of marine macroalgae, but in 1962 he is hired away by UC Santa Barbara. Following the lead of Paul Sund in 1954, this begins a decades-long line of students and researchers at FHL who use SCUBA to expand our knowledge about marine life into the subtidal zone.

1960 - Formal courses were offered Summer Quarter in two, five-week sessions, including Marine Invertebrate Zoology (Davenport and Dudley), Advanced Invertebrate Zoology (Illg and Dales), Advanced Invertebrate Embryology (Fernald and Whiteley), Problems in Fish Biology (Brown), Advanced Zooplankton Ecology (Johnson), Advanced Phytoplankton Ecology (Holmes), and Oceanographic Meteorology (Fleagle). Student costs for summer classes include full-time UW tuition of $85, dining hall meals are $150 for the summer and the dormitory is $30 per person for the quarter/tent occupancy is $25 for the quarter. Summer research space for those not involved in classes is $50 and rental of a family cottage is $150 for the summer.

1961 - The seawater system and the sewage system at FHL are remodeled.

Eugene Kozloff comes to FHL for the first time as summer teaching faculty for Invertebrate Zoology. He returns summer of 1962 for another stint in the same course, and fall of 1964 for sabbatical research, before being hired as UW faculty in 1966.

Alan Kohn joins the UW Zoology faculty as Assistant Professor, with an agreement with then-chairman Arthur Martin and FHL Director Bob Fernald, that he will be available to teach at FHL every other summer if needed. Dr. Kohn first teaches Marine Invertebrate Zoology at FHL in summer 1963, eventually teaching nine other classes including one of the first undergraduate Marine Apprenticeship courses, Marine Invertebrate Biodiversity, in spring 1999, before his retirement. Whereas most of Dr. Kohn's personal research on molluscs was carried out in the tropics, about half of Dr. Kohn's 21 PhD graduate students do their research at FHL during the next four decades.

1961-1962 - Frank Johnson and Osamu Shimomura from Princeton isolate the calcium-sensitive photoprotein aequorin and a byproduct green fluorescent protein (eventually known as GFP) from the jellyfish Aequorea at the Laboratories. Dr. Johnson continues with this project through the 1960s and Dr. Shimomura continues to visit FHL during the summer to collect and purify aequorin for more than two decades. Aequorin, originally from Friday Harbor jellyfish, is eventually characterized, cloned and used in laboratories throughout the world as a highly sensitive calcium probe for studying the role of calcium in intracellular processes. The green fluorescent protein (GFP) is also eventually cloned and widely used as a genetic marker protein, making it possible to insert fluorescence-tagged proteins into cells and to produce entire organisms that fluoresce under ultra-violet (UV) illumination.

1962 - A modern research laboratory building called the Main Lab (designed by Seattle architect Ralph Anderson), funded largely by a grant from the National Science Foundation, is completed and occupied in June. The new laboratory building provides space for year-round occupation by laboratory scientists as well as a library, director's office, photographic darkrooms, special holding tanks and aquaria, refridgerated "cold room," microtechnique room (eventually the computer room), conference and reading room, and rooms for synoptic collections of animals and algae and special equipment. An adjacent new building houses a new stockroom and student workshop. The by-now dilapidated pier between Labs 4 and 5 is removed and replaced by a new pier in front of Lab 1, and a new maintenance garage building is completed.

Richard Norris, phycologist (seaweed specialist), is appointed to the UW Botany Department and resumes his long association with FHL, teaching the annual summer Phycology course (still a core course in the FHL curriculum). (Dr. Norris first came to FHL in 1947 as an undergraduate teaching assistant in the summer Phycology class.) He continues teaching and doing research at FHL until leaving for South Africa in 1980, eventually returning to San Juan Island in retirement.

John McCutcheon of Friday Harbor is hired as the second FHL maintenance helper, retiring in 1987 after 25 years of service at FHL.

1963 - Albert Surina of Friday Harbor is hired as groundskeeper. He retires in 1991, after working at FHL for 28 years.

Dennis Willows arrives at FHL for his first summer, doing research as a graduate student of Graham Hoyle of the University of Oregon.

1964 - Dr. Fernald obtains a National Science Foundation grant from which summer expenses for a majority of the students are paid. Many could not have come without this generous support. (The end of this funding becomes the impetus for creation of the FHL Marine Science Fund, to ensure that the students at FHL would continue to be chosen on merit, not on ability to pay.) The grant also provides for a post-doctoral position at FHL and Jarl-Ove Strömberg, a Filosofie licenciat from Sweden becomes the resident Friday Harbor post-doc from June 1964 until March 1966.

Campus water lines are replaced, beginning at the property line on University Road, and a new water tower storage tank is built on the hill above the campus, using gravity to feed the new water system. The old platform-tents in the woods (each lit with a single light bulb) are replaced by 12 uninsulated wooden huts, each still with a single light bulb and translucent corrugated fiberglass roof.

Richard and Megumi Strathmann, and Charles and Gretchen Lambert (the latter pair first met at FHL that summer) begin their long associations with FHL, all taking summer classes in 1964 as graduate students. Richard is a student in Oceanography, Megumi is T.A. for the Invertebrate Zoology class which includes both Charlie and Dennis Willows, and Gretchen is taking Marine Algology.

1965 - Two small apartment buildings (designed by Seattle architect Ralph Anderson) for short-term use by course instructors and researchers are built on a high bluff overlooking Friday Harbor.

Spring courses are added to the FHL curriculum, thus continuing its expansion from a summer-only facility, ultimately to a place for year-round scientific endeavor.

Joyce Lewin, diatom physiologist, joins the Department of Oceanography in Seattle, and in 1966 begins coming to FHL every other summer to co-teach Phytoplankton in the 2-course Oceanography summer program. Eventually moving to the island to teach and do research, Dr. Lewin retires in 1982, but continues to be a presence around the laboratory for another 20 years.

1966 - Eugene Kozloff joins the UW Zoology Department and is appointed Resident Associate Director of the Laboratories to serve as a year-round administrator on the FHL campus. At that time the FHL Director was based on the Seattle campus during much of the year. Although there is a phone line upstairs in the office, Dr. Kozloff receives off-season calls from Director Fernald on the basement pay phone, which can be heard from his laboratory/office on the ground floor of the Main Lab.

mid to late 1960s - The use of SCUBA in subtidal ecological research becomes more widespread and is represented at FHL in the thesis research of numerous graduate students including Charles Birkeland, Larry Moulton, Paul Dayton, Karl Mauzey, Robert Vadas, Gordon Robilliard, Tom Spight, Bruce Menge, and others.

1967 - Ellis Ridgway, a graduate student from the University of Oregon who first came to FHL in the summer of 1965 and who continues to spend summers at FHL for the next 35 or so years, along with post-doctoral fellow Chris Ashley, uses aequorin and giant muscle fibers from the local giant barnacle Balanus nubilis to demonstrate the role of calcium ions in the control of muscle contraction. Dennis Willows publishes an article in Science on behavior elicited from a single brain cell of the sea slug Tritonia.

1967 or 1968 - Julia Frits Jensen (mother of Nordine Jensen, owner of Jensen's Boatyard south of Friday Harbor), gives her collection of dried and pressed plants to Eugene Kozloff for the FHL Herbarium. These 50-100 specimens, collected during the summer of 1908 when she was a student at the Marine Station in Friday Harbor, now constitute the oldest specimens in the FHL plant collection.

1969 - A. O. Dennis Willows, who did summer graduate work at FHL in the 1960s, is hired as Assistant Professor in the UW Department of Zoology.

1970 - Formal courses were offered Summer Quarter in two, five-week sessions, including Marine Invertebrate Zoology (Fritchman and Mariscal), Advanced Invertebrate Zoology (Ray and Swedmark), Advanced Invertebrate Embryology (Cloney and Morrill), Marine Algology (Waaland and Wynne), Marine Mycology (Hughes and Whisler) Zooplankton Ecology (Banse and Mullin), Phytoplankton Ecology (Hellebust and Lewin). Student costs for summer classes include full-time UW tuition of $133, dining hall meals are $185 for the summer and the dormitory is $30 per person for the quarter/hut occupancy is $25 for the quarter. Summer research space for those not involved in classes is $50 and rental of a family cottage is $70 per month.

early 1970s - The Northwest Regional Developmental Biology Conference begins holding its annual meeting at the Friday Harbor Laboratories; Dr. Steve Hauschka of UW Biochemistry is one of the chief organizers of this conference for many years. This popular event fills nearly every housing unit on campus (and some beds in town) annually for more than three decades (with the exception of two years when FHL was not available) continuing into the present, facilitating informal conversation among students and senior researchers alongside 2-3 days of formal talks and poster presentations.

1971 - Tom Schroeder joins the UW Zoology Department and takes up year-round residence at FHL (Tom first came to FHL in 1965 as a UW graduate student of professor Richard Cloney, to take the Comparative Invertebrate Embryology class), bringing with him an American Cancer Society grant with which he establishes a transmission electron microscopy facility at FHL. Dr. Schroeder uses the eggs of various marine invertebrates in his studies of the mechanics of cell division over the next two decades.

1972 - Robert L. Fernald is promoted to Professor Emeritus of Zoology and retires from directorship of the Friday Harbor Laboratories. remaining in residence as an active research scientist and graduate student mentor until his death in 1983.

Willows' Directorship (1972-2005)

1972 - A. O. Dennis Willows of the UW Department of Zoology is appointed Director of the Laboratories. Dr. Willows, who had already been working at the Laboratories 1963­67 as a graduate student under Graham Hoyle of University of Oregon, is well known for his pioneering neurobiological studies of a Friday Harbor seaslug, Tritonia, and together with his students, makes later contributions in navigational control by magnetic sensors and artificial neurological elements implantable in the same seaslugs.

1973 - Eugene Kozloff and Richard Norris offer the first "Zoobot" course for undergraduates, mostly from the Seattle campus, during spring quarter 1973. This is a full-load combined class in Marine Invertebrate Zoology and Phycology (Botany); it is offered at least annually during spring, and in some years fall, quarters for the next 35+ years through the present.

Eugene Kozloff resigns as Resident Associate Director of the Laboratories. As a Professor of Zoology, he continues teaching and doing research at FHL and publishing books on natural history, anatomy, biological techniques, and identification of invertebrates. In 1973 he publishes a layman's guide to the local marine shore called Seashore life of Puget Sound, the Strait of Georgia, and the San Juan Archipelago with University of Washington Press.

Richard Strathmann, who first arrived at FHL to take summer classes in 1964, is appointed as Assistant Professor of Zoology and Resident Associate Director of the Laboratories, having completed an M.S. at UW in Oceanography under Professor Karl Banse and a PhD in Zoology under Professor Alan Kohn a few years earlier. Dr. Strathmann serves as a core teacher and researcher at FHL for at least the next three decades, teaching classes in Invertebrate Zoology, Comparative Invertebrate Embryology, and Larval Biology, and developing a research program in functional morphology, comparative development and dispersal of marine invertebrate larvae that has been a focus of interest for many students and post-docs studying at FHL.

1967-1974 - "Crash" Corrigan, with William H. Ostruske and others of King's Lair Corporation from southern California, contrive a fantastic plan for a massive development for the rich and famous from Hollywood in the area between Bailer Hill Road and False Bay and Kanaka Bay on San Juan Island, including a village to be known as "Corriganville," 18-hole golf course, marina and moorages in Kanaka Bay for which they actually begin dumping rock for an offshore breakwater, and an associated motel and restaurant on the north side of Kanaka Bay, and most amazingly, a subdivision for more than 400 homes to be placed on a sort of waffle-iron plan of sand fingers like Balboa Island in California, to be created by a massive dredging project within False Bay. Seattle architect Frances Huggard works on design plans for this project from 1967 to 1972 (and is not paid for his services during that time according to court documents); he prepares a Public Utility District resolution, which is adopted by the San Juan County Board of County Commissioners. At least half of a 5000 foot runway to serve this development was constructed north of Kanaka Bay before the project, lacking permits and designed with no thought to the unique natural and scientific values of False Bay, was stopped because of delinquent loans and the ensuing legal suits. Professors Karl Banse and Bob Fernald write a series of letters to UW from 1966 to 1973 about the value of False Bay for research purposes, culminating in a request to the University to bid for the False Bay tidelands in the auction mandated by the court settlement in 1973.

1974 - University of Washington purchases the False Bay tidelands along with 23 acres of adjacent uplands including the lower reach of the stream at the head of False Bay for $150,000, at a forfeiture auction run by the sheriff of San Juan County (see item directly above this).

Eugene Kozloff publishes Keys to the Marine Invertebrates of Puget Sound, the San Juan Archipelago, and Adjacent Regions through University of Washington Press. This book memorializes the ongoing set of keys to invertebrates in the region that have been available in various draft versions for decades at FHL, with input from a wide variety of taxonomic specialists and edited with a great amount of general invertebrate expertise by Dr. Kozloff.

Claudia Mills begins her career at FHL as a graduate student taking Comparative Invertebrate Embryology in summer 1974. She continues to do research at FHL while a PhD student with Professor George Mackie at the University of Victoria. Dr. Mills remains in residence at FHL, studying primarily jellyfish and ctenophores, later also working on marine invasive species and ocean conservation issues, and continues her scientific career at the Labs to the present. In 2000 she began doing baseline plant surveys of all of the University of Washington properties in the San Juan Islands, writing vision statements for future management of these largely pristine uplands, all connected to important shoreline areas on San Juan and Shaw Islands.

1974-1978 - Carl Nyblade supervises a 5-year baseline study of the fauna in the San Juan Islands and Puget Sound. Based at FHL, Dr. Nyblade hires about 30 technicians and taxonomists, many of whom become long-term San Juan Island residents, including long-time FHL scientist and staff member Craig Staude.

1975 - Bill Ward of Rutgers University arrives to work for a few weeks in the summer with Dr. John Blinks of the Mayo Institute, collecting the abundant Aequorea medusae off the lab and town floating docks in order to study their photoproteins. Dr. Ward spends a few weeks nearly every summer from 1975 to 1993 at FHL with a few of his graduate students, collecting and processing about 70,000 Aequorea medusae per year, to characterize the green fluorescent protein now known as GFP and the energy transfer system that is part of this jellyfish's bioluminescent system. GFP is eventually cloned in the early 1990s by an associate of Ward's and the manufactured form becomes an important probe in all kinds of biological and medical science.

Muriel Guberlet (FHL resident at least in the 1930s) writes The Windows to his World: the Story of Trevor Kincaid, published by Pacific Books.

1976 - First Invertebrate Ball put on by Steve Stricker and Bob Pastorak, T.A.s for Eugene Kozloff's Invertebrate Zoology class. Mr. (later Dr.) Stricker had participated in an Invertebrate Ball at Hopkins Marine Lab in California and brought the tradition to FHL. This event has been held annually ever since in July, on one of the last weekends of the Invertebrate Zoology class, and has been the source of much merrymaking and the taking of silly photographs subsequently used in seminars worldwide.

Megan Dethier begins her career at FHL as a graduate student taking Invertebrate Zoology in summer 1976. She becomes resident at FHL as a graduate student, earning her PhD with Professor Bob Paine in the UW Zoology Department. Dr. Dethier becomes part of the core FHL teaching faculty, teaching Invertebrate Zoology in the summer of 1981 and then teaching the spring Zoobot course nearly every year from 1982 until the present. She also maintains a career in intertidal ecological research including many years of shoreline monitoring and characterizing the Washington shorelines.

Eugene Kozloff publishes Plants and Animals of the Pacific Northwest, An Illustrated Guide to the Natural History of Western Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia with University of Washington Press. This regional layman's guide to the terrestrial environment is reprinted several times in years to come.

1977 - Robert Waaland [UW Professor of Botany and frequent summer instructor of Phycology (Marine Algae) at FHL] publishes his layman's guide to algae, called Common Seaweeds of the Pacific Coast, with Pacific Search Press.

1978 - National Science Foundation funds a scanning electron microscope, which is installed in April 1979 in a ground floor room next to the transmission electron microscope, thus expanding the electron microscopy facility available to students and researchers.

FHL inherits a number of large, three-foot diameter transparent, plexiglass cylinders that are cut apart in various configurations, dictated at least partially by existing cracks and other breaks, and distributed around the labs as outdoor tanks, fitted with running sea water. These tanks were originally paid for by National Science Foundation and built as hollow, sealed floats used to support enormous plastic bags hung in Saanich Inlet on Vancouver Island in the 1970s for a 6-year series of oceanographic experiments in which a piece of the water column was captured in a bag and then the processes occurring after various manipulations were followed over time. Claudia Mills discovered the plastic tanks sitting abandoned in a parking lot of the Institute for Ocean Sciences in Sidney, B.C., while doing her PhD research using the University of Victoria ship from the I.O.S. dock. The tanks were subsequently surplussed by the U.S. government and then barged over to FHL where they have served as aquaria for more than 30 years.

Boris Masinovsky, a Jewish immigrant from the Soviet Union, arrives at FHL with his family, under the sponsorship of Dennis Willows, to begin graduate studies and works the first summer with Steve Kempf to further improve culture methods for the seaslug Tritonia diomedea. Boris is the first of many Russian or ex-Soviet scientists to work at FHL over the coming decades.

1979 - Seventy-fifth anniversary year for FHL.

The first marine Biomechanics course is taught at the Friday Harbor Labs as Advanced Invertebrate Zoology (invertebrate animal mechanics) by Steve Wainwright and Steve Vogel of Duke University, and Mimi Koehl (recent Duke Ph.D.), taking advantage of the wide array of body forms available in the marine environment. This new discipline, along with new fields such as molecular biology and population genetics, is helping to redefine what becomes known as Integrative Biology, as the distinctions between Botany and Zoology become blurred.

Formal courses offered include: Spring Quarter - the undergraduate "ZooBot" class comprised of both Marine Zoology and Marine Botany (taught by Strathmann and Norris together), and graduate classes in Comparative Invertebrate Embryology (Fernald) and Advanced Invertebrate Physiology: Neurobiology (Willows); Summer Quarter - graduate level classes in Marine Invertebrate Zoology (Kozloff and Illg), Advanced Invertebrate Zoology (Koehl, Vogel and Wainwright), Comparative Invertebrate Embryology (Chia and Strathmann), Marine Algology (Norris and South), Marine Mycology (Hughes and Porter), Marine Fish Biology (Nafpaktitis and Pietsch). Student costs for summer classes include full-time UW tuition of $229 ($798 non-resident tuition applies all but summer quarter), dining hall meals are $407 for the summer and the dormitory is $50 per person for the 10-week session. Summer research space for those not involved in classes is $50 and rental of a family cottage is $150 per month.

A breakwater composed of three concrete floats linked by metal bridges is installed to protect the FHL dock. The breakwater allows the floats to stay attached to the dock in the winter, and boats to be moored at the FHL dock year round and safe from storms, thus improving the year-round research program at the Labs.

Richard Strathmann purchases the first personal computer at FHL, an Apple II. His student Larry McEdward begins a live-long love affair with computers by fitting this little Apple with nearly every conceivable accessory in the next couple of years.

David Duggins begins his career as FHL Marine Tech as a graduate student in Forestry. He earns a PhD from UW and remains at FHL, continuing a long career doing subtidal ecological research. Dr. Duggins' marine tech job at the lab expands over the years to include being diving safety officer, radiation safety officer, co-captain of the research vessels Nugget and Centennial, and chief pilot of the ROV. In 2003 Dr. Duggins' title is changed to Supervisor of Marine Operations, reflecting the many changes in his duties over the years.

FHL alumni Mark Anderson and Bruce Stedman, together with San Juan Island resident Ken Balcomb, found the Whale Museum in Friday Harbor, as the original Curator and Executive Director. The institution becomes a Friday Harbor landmark over subsequent decades and an important voice in implementing protective policies for the resident population of killer whales.

1980 - An FHL program of one or two-year post-doctoral fellowships is begun, supporting a long series of creative young scientists whose residence has greatly enhanced intellectual life at the Laboratories. This program was funded by a generous gift from James Ray, a San Juan County resident, and has continued to provide for post-docs at the lab for 25 years.

1981 - Craig Staude is hired to fill the second Marine Tech position as a graduate student assistantship. After earning a PhD from UW Fisheries, he becomes a permanent member of the expanding FHL staff as Marine Tech along with David Duggins. Dr. Staude's duties gradually expand over the years to include computer support, being co-captain of the Nugget and Centennial, organizer of public tours of FHL from the late 1970s into the mid-1980s, curator of the Synoptic Collection, unofficial public relations manager who organizes FHL Open Houses, County Fair exhibits, and trainer of lab visitors on various pieces of equipment including the confocal microscope. He also remains active in his personal research on amphipods. His job title is eventually changed to Computer Specialist, but his duties remain much more varied.

Researchers Allison and Roger Longley welcome the only baby known to have been born in housing on the FHL campus.

1980-1982 - Richard Strathmann, then Eugene Kozloff, serve as Acting Director of FHL for two years, when Dennis Willows takes leave in Washington D.C. to serve at the National Science Foundation.

1982 - The State of Washington provides money for construction of three new year-round student dormitories and the associated Commons building, replacing the old uninsulated dorms in the same locations.

The first computer for general use is installed in the microtechnique room in the Fernald Building. This is a CPM system, put together by the San Juan Island firm called Prism, owned by Chuck and Deanna Anderson, and is used largely for word-processing by graduate students and researchers. A daisy wheel printer is bought to support it. (Megumi Strathmann and Bob Fernald have a second Prism CPM computer in Lab 6 for putting together their book on reproduction and development of marine invertebrates.)

A second general use computer is installed in the main lab for data processing - this is a CODATA 3300 UNIX microcomputer, which is a true multi-tasking, multi-user microcomputer with four "dumb" terminals. Roger Longley, a year-round neurobiology researcher, provides some support for this computer. The microtechnique room is beginning its transition into the "computer room".

1983 - Dr. John Bell of San Juan Island donates the Nugget, a 45-foot, double-ended, salmon trawler, to the university. It takes the place of the Hydah in support of teaching and research at the Laboratories. Gear from the Hydah is transferred to the Nugget and retired Cleave Vandersluys helps Drs. David Duggins and Craig Staude and Administrator Kathryn Hahn learn to operate the gear and the boat.

Eugene Kozloff publishes an expanded version of his 1973 book, Seashore Life, now called Seashore Life of the Northern Pacific Coast, An Illustrated Guide to Northern California, Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia with University of Washington Press. This popular regional guide to the nearshore ocean is reprinted several times.

The glass-pipe seawater system built in 1950 - 1951, which is suffering increasing breakage as it ages, is replaced by a black plastic system, with two sets of pipes feeding all laboratories, so they can be used alternately, allowing the animals growing in one set to be cleaned out while the other is in use.

1984 - Professors Peter Jumars and Arthur Nowell of the Department of Oceanography receive a National Science Foundation grant to study the effects of near-bottom flow on the benthic community, including funds to build a new Lab 7, to house a large racetrack-like flume that is central to the project.

University of Washington purchases tidelands comprising Argyle Lagoon and the eastern 3/4 of Argyle Creek and an associated 1.67 acres of uplands on the north side of Argyle Creek, for $345,000. UW had already been leasing this property since 1965 as a biological preserve and research area.

Following the famous "1984" Apple commercial that ran during the 1984 Super Bowl, the computer revolution at FHL continues with the addition of 10, 128K Macintosh or 512K "Fat Mac" computers for general use by everyone at FHL, bringing computers fully into the lab lifestyle. The microtechnique room becomes the computer room; microtechnique, no longer popular, is relegated to a small basement room in the Fernald (Main) Lab. While most of the FHL students and researchers are busy mastering the new science of word-processing, the kids living on campus, most notably James Longley, are fascinated by MacPaint and spend weeks experimenting with computer art.

1985 - The first laser printer, an Apple Laserwriter, is installed in the computer room of the Main Lab.

Trish Morse moves the base of her academic career from Northeastern University in Boston to the University of Washington, spending time in subsequent years both at the Seattle campus and in residence at FHL.

1986 - The last year of a long run of the full-summer, two-course basic Oceanography class, including both Phytoplankton and Zooplankton Ecology, that was taught every other summer from 1960 to 1986. Many biological oceanographers came of age through this class, guided by Professors Karl Banse, Mike Mullin, and others, in choosing projects at FHL that many of the students went on to develop elsewhere into their dissertation research. The Oceanography curriculum at FHL is converted to more topic-specific, single term oceanography courses, including Bio-Optics and Oceanographic Acoustics, spearheaded by Mary Jane Perry and Chuck Greene, respectively, and continues to serve a material fraction of the country's pool of oceanography students in these more advanced and specialized fields.

The Gear Locker is remodeled and enlarged. A new pumphouse is built on the rocks on Cantilever Point, no longer cantilevered out over the water. The seawater intake pipe is extended down into deeper (colder and cleaner) water.

1987 - Eugene Kozloff, with the assistance of Linda Price and a wide variety of taxonomic specialists, publishes Marine Invertebrates of the Pacific Northwest through University of Washington Press. This book represents a major revision and expansion of Kozloff's 1974 book of keys to the invertebrates, incorporating the ongoing set of keys to invertebrates in the region that have been available in various draft versions for decades at FHL, again edited with a great amount of general invertebrate expertise by Dr. Kozloff.

Megumi Strathmann's book Reproduction and Development of Marine Invertebrates of the Northern Pacific Coast is published by University of Washington Press, incorporating much of the FHL embryological lore and laboratory techniques, with several chapters written or co-written by many other FHL scientists.

Labs 1,2,5 and 6 are renovated in a two-phased process from 1987-1988.

1988 - E-mail first becomes available to some (enthusiastic and persistent) FHL researchers and students through a shared federal Omnet account (Friday.Harbor.Labs) or Bitnet accounts.

1990 - John Blinks, summer visiting investigator since the mid-1960s, moves his main research activities to FHL from The Mayo Institute. He brings with him the last 7 years of a 10-year Career Merit Award from the National Institutes of Health. Michelle Herko works as his lab technician for the next decade (and also serves as FHL resident caretaker with her family).

Eugene Kozloff publishes an undergraduate textbook on invertebrate zoology called Invertebrates, with Saunders College Publishing.

Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife sets up five small marine protected areas in the San Juans including Argyle Lagoon and 500 yards offshore of the mouth of False Bay; also extending out 500 yards off most of the shoreline around the FHL property, and near Parks Bay and Squaw Bay on Shaw Island. These are known as the San Juan Marine Preserves in the Department of Fish and Wildlife fish management bulletins.

Northeastern University begins offering the west coast quarter of its East/West program in marine biology at FHL. This one-year program, designed for advanced undergraduates, but also attracting many post-baccalaureate students, includes quarters on the west coast, in Jamaica, and at Northeastern's Nahant marine facility. The west coast portion is given during autumn quarter and moves up from the Oregon Institute of Marine Biology to FHL in 1990, where it is offered annually through autumn 2002, at which point Northeastern University changes to semesters, no longer meshing well with the quarter system at UW/FHL, and moves the program to the Catalina Marine Station in southern California.

1991 - Formal courses offered include: Spring Quarter - the undergraduate "ZooBot" class comprised of both Marine Zoology and Marine Botany (taught by Dethier and Gabrielson together), and graduate classes in Larval Ecology and Evolution (Strathmann and Emlet) and Molecular Neurobiology (Bothwell, Lloyd, Matsudaira, Scheller, Taghert and Willows); Summer Quarter - graduate level classes in Marine Invertebrate Zoology (Kozloff and Wilson), Marine Taphonomy (Kidwell and LaBarbera), Comparative Invertebrate Embryology (Lambert and McEdward), Marine Phycology (Gabrielson and Pueschel), Functional Morphology and Marine Ecology of Fishes (Liem and Miller), Climate and the Marine Biosphere (Gammon), Contemporary Issues in Marine Science and Law (deRoos). Student costs for summer classes include full-time UW tuition of $693 for graduate or undergraduate students, dining hall meals are $735 for the summer and the dormitory is $60 per person for the 10-week session. Summer research space for those not involved in classes is $150 per month and rental of a family cottage is $165 per month. Spring quarter tuition for a fulltime undergraduate is $651 if a Washington resident and $1811 if nonresident; for a fulltime graduate student is $1011 if a Washington resident and $2526 if nonresident; student room and board are the same as in the summer.

Scott Schwinge joins the FHL staff, hired to replace the retiring Dick DeStaffany as FHL stockroom attendant and electronic technician. In 1999 he moves up to become FHL Administrator upon the retirement of Sally Dickman from that job.

George Mackie of the University of Victoria is elected to Fellowship in the Royal Society of London for his work on evolutionary and comparative neurobiology, done largely on tunicates and jellyfish at FHL. Dr. Mackie and his graduate students have been regular visiting summer researchers at the labs since 1961. He is one of the few Canadians to be honored by such a fellowship, having been previously elected to Fellowship in the Royal Society of Canada in 1982.

1991-1993 - Following two winters of catastrophic storms that brought down many trees on campus and throughout the county, most of the electrical lines on campus are buried underground.

The western property line of the FHL terrestrial preserve, which over time was recorded as three quite different lines on San Juan Island maps, is resurveyed and a single line is finally established by Federal land surveyors working for the Bureau of Land Management.

A quarterly series of public lectures is begun in association with quarterly potluck dinners at FHL. The attendees at such lectures become known as the Marine Associates.

Laurie Spaulding becomes head of the cooking operation at the Dining Hall in 1992. She first began working summers at the Dining Hall in 1983 as a young teenager, and is still going strong in 2010.

1993 - Individual e-mail accounts become generally available to FHL researchers, students and staff through a UW server at FHL.

National Science Foundation provides funding for the construction of Lab 8, for the study of fishes.
Labs 3 and 4 are renovated.

1994 - The first confocal microscope at FHL (a BIORAD MRC 600) is purchased with a grant from National Institutes of Health for $144,000 along with $50,000 from the University of Washington. (A "confocal" is a computer-driven, laser-scanning microscope that allows one to optically section a fluorescently-stained specimen.) Another BIORAD MRC 600 confocal microscope is purchased ten years later by Dr. Victoria Foe of the Centerfor Cell Dynamics for FHL in 2004, for $4000 on e-Bay!

The Summer Science School for kids begins its three-summer run at FHL. Founded by Joan Miyazaki, Cindy Brandon and Sylvia Behrens Yamada, summer visitor-women scientists and mothers, the first summer involved mostly children already on-campus with their scientist parents, but included also a few children from town. It took place with a few old lab microscopes in a tent erected on the concrete pad where cottage 8 had burned down in 1991. The second summer, taught by Sylvia Behrens and Albert Shepard of the Whale Museum in town, was more organized, included a full-color advertising poster, and enrolled 50 children, including many from town, for a three-week program.

1995 - FHL begins a mentorship program to increase diversity in marine science, matching 2-6 summer students with FHL researchers. Over the years, this program has provided research experience and opportunities for university seniors, post-baccalaureates and graduate students from all over the country. The program has received financial support from the United Negro College Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Society for Cell Biology, the University of Washington and the Anne Hof Blinks Memorial. It continues to the present and is now known as the Blinks Fellows in Marine Research program in recognition of a generous supporting donation.

Four of the 1948-vintage residential cottages are completely remodeled from the inside, retaining the familiar exterior look. The old, funky Dorm J for graduate students is replaced with a new graduate student Dorm J with cooking facilities, thus changing forever the always-distinctive "Dorm J" culture.

The Developmental Advisory Board is established to help raise funds for FHL scholarships, fellowships and research, in support of students and faculty and capital facilities.

1996 - Eugene Kozloff, together with Linda (Price) Beidleman, and with contributions from many other taxonomists, revises the book of keys to local invertebrates Marine Invertebrates of the Pacific Northwest, originally published in 1987 by University of Washington Press.

The San Juan County Board of County Commissioners appoints a citizens' Marine Resources (advisory) Committee to consider county issues of importance in the marine environment. Dennis Willows serves on the MRC for its first decade, usually with another FHL scientist (Laura Rogers-Bennett, then Terrie Klinger) on this committee of 10-15 residents representing a diversity of marine interests. An early accomplishment of the MRC was to establish 9 voluntary bottomfish reserves in San Juan County in 1997; later projects include studies of bottomfish and of fishing activity, censusing county beaches for forage fish spawning areas, and public education about marine resource issues. In 2003 they recommend to the Board of County Commissioners to declare the entire county a Marine Stewardship Area (see below, January 2004), and begin working on a zonation scheme for use of marine waters in San Juan County.

FHL fields a team, the Sea Sluggers, for the summer adult coed softball league on San Juan Island. The team, peopled by graduate students, post-docs, researchers and FHL staff, who rotate on and off the team over the years, is still going strong more than 10 years later, sporting the largest cheering section of any team in the league.

1997 - Craig Staude, marine technologist, computer specialist, unofficial public relations manager, co-captain of the research vessel Nugget, and amphipod taxonomist, becomes the first FHL staff member to win one of the prestigious annual University of Washington Distinguished Staff Awards, in the first year such awards are given.

Megan Dethier and David Duggins begin volunteering their expertise at Friday Harbor Elementary school, setting up a marine aquarium. Their efforts increase over the next few years, with annual field projects for several grades. By 1999 the K-12 Outreach program has hired a coordinator; by 2004 this program is providing marine learning experiences in four Friday Harbor schools.

Three more residential cottages are built from new plans (replacing the decrepit 1930s-vintage Utterback Cottage, as well as the old "Cottage 8" which burned down during a terrific rainstorm in 1990, and adding one entirely new cottage). All cottages are renumbered, changing their old numerical identifications into letters, to avoid further confusion.

1998 - David Wrobel and Claudia Mills' book Pacific Coast Pelagic Invertebrates is published by Sea Challengers and the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This book reflects Dr. Mills' 25 years of experience with medusae and ctenophores at FHL; it covers the "jelly" fauna along the entire west coast from Alaska to Mexico. It is republished in 2003.

The first Marine Conservation Biology course is taught at FHL in the summer of 1998 by Terrie Klinger, Jennifer Ruesink and Laura Rogers-Bennett, reflecting global interest in better marine protected areas and awareness of major problems of ocean health. This course becomes a regular part of the summer curriculum around the turn of the millennium, with Terrie Klinger as the returning instructor about every other summer.

1999 - Lab 9, designed by Anderson Koch and Smith of Seattle, is completed in 1999 with funds from University of Washington and National Science Foundation; a nucleotide autosequencer is added with funds from NSF. This lab is largely a biochemistry, molecular systematics and genetics facility, but as a systematics facility, it also becomes home to the Synoptic Collection which had been displaced from the Fernald Lab by a growing number of computers. Virtually inaccessible for a decade, the Synoptic Collection had been stored in recent years in an old, wooden, 1948-vintage dormitory building that had been moved behind the maintenance building.

The first undergraduate research apprenticeship team classes are taught in spring of 1999. The format is immediately a popular success, and up to three simultaneous apprenticeship teams have continued to be taught in spring and fall quarters.

The first annual Paul Illg memorial lectures in Invertebrate Zoology are given in mid-summer. These lectures are presented by a prominent scholar in the field of invertebrate zoology not otherwise likely to be at FHL. The visiting scholar gives a pair of lectures ­ one for FHL scientists and one for the Friday Harbor public, and interacts for several days with students and researchers at the Laboratories. Scientists who have been hosted at FHL as Illg Lecturers include Mimi Koehl (1999), Dietrich Hoffmann (2000), Ed Ruppert (2001), Margaret McFall-Ngai (2002), John Bishop (2003), Nancy Knowlton (2004), Gary Vermeij (2005).

The Invertebrate Zoology course is not taught at FHL during 1999, probably for the first (and only) time since the labs had been closed during WWII, and possibly since the inception of the marine lab on San Juan Island.

Feral red foxes, with numbers increasing all over San Juan Island, have all-but-eliminated the wild European rabbits and (introduced) American turkeys on campus.

2000 - The Helen Riaboff Whiteley Center, a study building and four residential cottages designed by architects Anderson, Koch and Smith of Seattle, opens on the Friday Harbor Labs Campus. Built with a generous donation from long time FHL scientist and supporter Arthur Whiteley, the center is a retreat for scholarly and creative activities. Three additional cottages are completed in 2002. The "Whiteley Center" attracts scholars of many disciplines from many countries.

A second confocal microscope is purchased through a grant from the Seaver Institute to Victoria Foe, Garry Odell, and George von Dassow.

An ad hoc committee forms to consider management issues on the terrestrial portions of the FHL Biological Preserve and other University-owned properties in the San Juan Islands.

Colin Hermans begins detailed oral history project of the Hydah with Cleave Vandersluys, now in his 80s and still living in Friday Harbor.

2001 - FHL acquires a remotely operated vehicle (ROV), capable of video exploration of ocean depths as great as 600 feet, with funds from the Ackerley Foundation and the National Undersea Research Program. In addition to various research projects, this ROV is also used in support of the now fully functional K-12 outreach program in Friday Harbor schools.

David Duggins, marine technologist, diving safety officer, co-captain of the research vessel Nugget, and subtidal research marine ecologist, becomes the second FHL staff member to win one of five annual University of Washington Distinguished Staff Awards.

2002 - A team of cell biologists led by UW Zoology Professors Victoria Foe and Garrett Odell and post-doctoral scholars Ed Munro and George von Dassow (who all became resident at FHL in about 2000) is awarded a five-year grant from the National Institute of General Medical Science to establish a Center of Excellence in Computational Biology at the Friday Harbor Labs. The facility is subsequently called the Center for Cell Dynamics and hosts a staff of 10-20 resident and visiting scientists. Drs. Odell, von Dassow, and Munro teach a one-quarter undergraduate research apprenticeship team in cell biology related to the interests of the CCD about every other year and Dr. von Dassow becomes a regular in the rotation of instructors for the summer Comparative Embryology classes.

The FHL Research Apprenticeship Program receives the prestigious University of Washington 2002 Brotman Award for instructional excellence. This program offers a one-quarter (ten week) intense, guided, research experience for a small number of undergraduate students to do original research on a well-defined topic, supervised usually by two professors who themselves do research in the same area.

UW Professor of Bioengineering Pedro Verdugo receives a five-year National Science Foundation grant that allows him to establish a year-round research and teaching program at the Laboratories, moving up from the Seattle campus. He continues teaching in Seattle, but also teaches undergraduate research apprenticeships on marine planktonic polymer gels at FHL in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006.

2003 - R. V. Centennial becomes FHL's new research vessel and comes with her ex-owner, Capt. Mark Anderson, as a new part-time FHL employee. This boat is a 58-foot long, steel-hulled, Alaskan limit seiner that has been refitted to meet the expanding needs of research and teaching at the Laboratories. The Centennial's purchase and refit was supported by grants from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, UW College of Ocean and Fish Sciences and UW Office of the Provost. The Nugget is retired after twenty years of service at FHL, and sold at auction.

The pay phone is removed from the ground floor hallway in the Fernald Lab. This pay phone was used for 40 years by scientists assigned to lab spaces on that floor to receive incoming calls (see Kozloff entry 1966). By 2003, many are carrying cell phones and the space occupied by the payphone is needed to expand the tangle of computer networking hardware nearby. The two other general-use phones for outgoing calls still exist in the Main Lab, and with few exceptions, other laboratory spaces remain telephone-free by design.

A third confocal microscope is purchased as part of the Center for Cell Dynamics.

The garage below the caretaker's house, previously used by Maintenance for storage, is converted to an art studio for use by visiting scholars at the Whiteley Center, with monies donated by a San Juan County resident.

Dr. Chuck Greene, former UW Oceanography graduate student who did much of his PhD research at FHL in the 1980s, began teaching classes in marine bioaccoustics at FHL in a series of summer bioacoustical oceanography workshops and courses from 1993 to 1998, with other courses in that first series held at other marine stations. FHL hosted a second series of summer marine bioacoustics courses organized by Chuck Greene, beginning in 2003 and running through 2007. The principal goal of these workshop courses has been to provide advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral investigators with a broad understanding of the acoustic tools and techniques used to address basic and applied problems in biological oceanography and cetacean ecology. Bringing together many of the top researchers in marine bioaccoustics, biological oceanography, and marine mammal biology, students have had the unique opportunity to work side by side with active scientists using state-of-the-art tools and techniques during these workshops.

early 2000s - Important intertidal field sites in San Juan County used by FHL researchers (compare to those listed for 1915) include on San Juan Island: FHL shoreline, Argyle Lagoon and Argyle Creek, Cattle Point, False Bay and Kanaka Bay, Eagle Point and Eagle Cove, Illg Beach and Grandmother's Cove, Deadman Bay, Mitchell Bay, shore of Griffin Bay near 4th of July Beach, Pile Point, Westcott Bay, Jakle's Lagoon, Jackson Beach and Whiteley and Brookbank beaches on Griffin Bay, and Edwards Reef; also Turn Island, Point George shoreline on Shaw Island, Crescent Beach in East Sound on Orcas Island, Iceberg Point and Spencer Spit on Lopez Island. Important subtidal locations used for scientific dredging by the labs include Salmon Bank off southern tip of San Juan Island, East Sound, off Rock Point and Flat Point west of Lopez Island, from Point Caution to Eureka east of San Juan Island, Mosquito Pass between San Juan Island and Henry Island, off south shore of Canoe Island, "Potato Patch" south of Olga, Massacre Bay in West Sound, and the passage between Sentinel Island and Speiden Island.

2004 - The Centennial - 100 years - of Friday Harbor Laboratories.

All of San Juan County is designated as a volunteer Marine Stewardship Area on January 27, 2004 by resolution of the Board of County Commissioners, thus restating the 1923 designation (see 1923 above) by the Washington State Legislature of the San Juan Archipelago as a marine biological preserve (which has remained codified as Washington R.C.W. 28B.20.320 ever since 1923).

Director Dennis Willows announces his intention to resign as FHL Director, while continuing his research in neuroscience. A UW search committee is appointed to find a replacement director for FHL: the search concludes with the recommendation that Kenneth Sebens be appointed to succeed Dennis Willows as Director of FHL.

Courses are taught three quarters every year now at FHL, most typically with two instructors and a teaching assistant for 6-12 students; all courses run full-time, six days a week for five (summer quarter has two, five week sessions) or ten weeks. During this centennial year, course offerings include during Spring Quarter: an undergraduate course in Marine Zoology/Marine Botany and three undergraduate or post-baccalaureate research apprenticeships From Neurons to Behavior: Comparative Neurobiology of Marine Invertebrates, Marine Molecular Biology, and Marine Fish Ecology; during Summer Quarter: Marine Invertebrate Zoology, Marine Algae, Comparative Invertebrate Embryology, Marine Conservation Biology, Functional Morphology and Ecology of Marine Fishes, Invertebrate Larval Ecology, and Experimental and Field Approaches in Biology and Paleontology (Predator-Prey Interactions); during Autumn Quarter: three undergraduate or post-baccalaureate research apprenticeships in Pelagic Ecosystem Function in the San Juan Archipelago, Seismic Deformation and its Relation to Volcanic, Hydrothermal and Biologic Activity along the Endeavor Ridge, and The Aquatic Gel Phase: Dynamics of Marine Biopolymers. Student costs for summer classes include full-time UW tuition of $2200 for graduate or undergraduate students, room and board dormitory/dining hall is $1442 for the 10-week session. Summer research space for those not involved in classes is $350 per month and rental of a family cottage is $313 per month. Spring quarter tuition for a fulltime undergraduate is $1656 if a Washington resident and $5373 if nonresident; student room and board are the same as in the summer.

Two-story Lab 10 is completed in April with funds from the National Institute of General Medical Science as the new location for the Center for Cell Dynamics, which had been occupying Lab 5 since 2002.

The old Phillips 300 transmission electron microscope in the Main Lab (purchased in 1971 and now very tired) is replaced by a 1980s vintage Phillips 420 T.E.M., obtained from the Department of Biostructure at UW, funded by the FHL Center for Cell Dynamics.

In spring 2004, an additional residential duplex is built with funds from UW, just north of the laundry facility. The remaining two old 1950s-era duplexes and mobile home C are demolished in the autumn and one more new duplex is built, again featuring hot water and insulated walls. All duplexes and cottages have now been re-assigned letter names (corresponding to marine species names), so that all (non-apartment) housing is now lettered in a single, more-or-less linear, albeit winding, sequence.

Over the past four decades, the University has played a smaller and smaller role in supporting all aspects of FHL, especially, and maybe tragically, in teaching, and capital construction. This mirrors a national trend in which citizens are allocating less tax money to higher education.

2005 - Eugene Kozloff, now 84, publishes his 7th book, Plants of Western Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, with Timber Press of Portland, Oregon. This project has occupied much of his time over the past decade, during which he has been putting in full days at the lab except when he is off on field trips. It has seriously eaten into the time he otherwise would have devoted to playing Baroque chamber music with a small group of his friends. In the past couple of years, Gene has finally broken down and accepted e-mail as a reasonable, even useful, means of communication.

Sebens' Directorship (2005- )

2005 - Ken Sebens is appointed Director of the Friday Harbor Laboratories and Professor in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington. He arrives at FHL in August 2005 to take over from A.O. Dennis Willows. Dr. Sebens wife, Dr. Emily Carrington, is also given a faculty position in the Dept. of Biology and along with her husband becomes part of the teaching faculty both on campus at FHL and in Seattle.

Professors Arthur Whiteley and Richard Norris, both retired and living on San Juan Island, have known all seven permanent directors of FHL: Trevor Kincaid, T. C. Frye, Tommy Thompson, Richard Fleming, Bob Fernald, Dennis Willows, and Ken Sebens. Colin Hermans, also retired now on San Juan Island, knew personally all directors from Thompson forward, and as a child of a UW professor, “was aware of” Professors Kincaid and Frye, but can’t be sure if he personally met them or not.

Beam Reach, a new private university program accredited through the UW, combining student independent research in oceanography and acoustics with environmental stewardship and sustainability, completes its inaugural 10-week session at FHL in the autumn quarter. This field research program conducted by Dr. Scott Veirs, together with his father Dr. Val Veirs and others, combines five weeks of onshore classes at FHL with five weeks at sea on a catamaran sailboat the Gato Verde, focused on original student acoustic studies involving the local orca whales, while learning about and practicing living in a more sustainable manner.

2006 – Emily Carrington installs a permanent weather station above the pumphouse on Cantilever Point with the assistance of Gretchen Moeser, Sarah Gilman, and donation of some of the equipment from FHL alum Brian Helmuth.

2007 – Big winter storms bring down a huge load of branches during one snow storm, followed by many entire mature trees (mostly firs) in a subsequent storm. Springtime campus cleanup includes hiring a local contractor to harvest many of the blown-down trees with a skidder; lumber from these trees was cut on the island and returned to the labs.

Stone retaining walls below labs 5 and 6, which were originally installed in 1935, are repaired, with new drain culverts. The Director’s House, built in 1928 and deemed too expensive to repair and remodel, is demolished and the ground prepared for a new prefabricated house to be erected in its place.

After being resident at FHL for approximately 40 years, Eugene Kozloff and his wife Ann move to Anacortes. where Gene accepts an invitation from the Shannon Point Marine Lab of Western Washington University to set himself up there, and continues to go to work daily.

2008 – The new Director’s House, built modularly by Timberland Homes, is delivered and bolted together on its new concrete foundation in the vicinity where the previous Director’s House was demolished. Director Ken Sebens and his family move in.

Fernanda Oyarzun, graduate student of Richard Strathmann who spends about half of her time at FHL, receives an all-UW award for Excellence in Teaching, which is given annually to two graduate teaching assistants who demonstrate outstanding skills in the classroom. Fernanda received this award for a new class on the Seattle campus that she helped develop and teach, "Learning to Learn in the Biological Sciences."

The 2008 Nobel Prize for Chemistry is awarded to Osamu Shimomura, Roger Tsien, and Martin Chalfie for work on green fluorescent protein (GFP) from the Friday Harbor jellyfish Aequorea victoria. Dr. Shimomura did research on Aequorea photoproteins at the Friday Harbor Labs for 18 summers between 1961 and 1988; Drs. Chalfie and Tsien did some of their work at FHL during short visits in the early 1990s.

Resident Associate Director Richard Strathmann retires at the end of 2008 and Adam Summers is hired as his replacement, although Summers spends a year working for NSF in Washington D.C. before arriving.

2009 – Centennial Year for the town of Friday Harbor (1909 - 2009).

Richard Strathmann receives the 2009 University of Washington Marsha L. Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award, which recognizes a faculty member who has made outstanding contributions to the education and guidance of graduate students; he was nominated for this award by his graduate students.

Two new graduate student dorms, built modularly by Timberland Homes, are delivered in late spring 2009 just in time for use in the summer. Stone patio and walkways are completed at the Director’s House. One women’s bathroom in the student dorms is entirely gutted and rebuilt during the spring and early summer, as it was rotting away. The stockroom is moved entirely to the basement of Lab 9 and some sheds outside of the student workshop, losing effectively at least half of its space and a lot of stuff is thrown away in the move. A new student computer facility is built in the original stockroom space, finished towards the end of the year, after being used as a classroom in summer session B.

Adam Summers arrives in September 2009 to begin his tenure as Associate Director and scientist at FHL. He sets up in Lab 9, above the present stockroom.

2010 – Courses continue to be taught during three academic quarters at FHL (no classes winter quarter), most typically with two instructors and a teaching assistant for 6-12 students; all courses run full-time, five days a week for five or ten weeks (summer quarter has two, five-week sessions). The serious global recession of 2008-2010 caused substantial increases in tuition at UW and in prices for housing and lab space at FHL. Course offerings for 2010 include during two choices for Spring Quarter: an undergraduate course in Marine Zoology/Marine Botany with research apprenticeship in Climate Change and Coastal Marine Organisms, and one undergraduate or post-baccalaureate research apprenticeship in Genomic Biology and Physiology. Nine classes are offered in the Summer Quarter: Marine Invertebrate Zoology, Marine Algae, Comparative Invertebrate Embryology, Biomechanics, Neuroethology, Functional Morphology and Ecology of Marine Fishes, Invertebrate Larval Biology, and Ecology of Infectious Marine Disease, and a Late Summer course in Scientific Diving. During Autumn Quarter there is one undergraduate or post-baccalaureate research apprenticeship in Pelagic Ecosystem Function in the San Juan Archipelago, and a combined “Marine Biology Quarter” including credits for Social Change and the Marine Environment, Ocean Circulation, Marine Biology and a Marine Environment Research Apprenticeship. The Beam Reach Marine Science and Sustainability School ran 10-week spring and autumn research sessions out of FHL using the biodiesel-electric hybrid sailboat Gato Verde. Student costs for summer FHL classes include UW tuition of $2271 for one undergraduate course to $7430 for two graduate-student courses; room and board dormitory/dining hall is $2600-2944 for the 10-week session. Summer research space for those not involved in classes is $610 per month and rental of a family cottage is $715-1075 per month. Spring quarter tuition for a fulltime Washington undergraduate is $2564, increased to $3116 for autumn quarter; student room and board are the same as in the summer. The independent Beam Reach program has a separate tuition schedule.

The Friday Harbor Labs Maintenance and Operations Crew (Fred Ellis, Rick McCarthy, Tom Campbell, George Illif, Tommy Pieples and Jeff Seitz) receive a 2010 University of Washington Distinguished Staff Award, "given to staff who contribute to the mission of the University, respond creatively to challenges, maintain the highest standards in their work, establish productive working relationships and promote a respectful and supportive workplace."

Terrie Klinger, of the UW Marine Affairs Department and regular summer resident of FHL, received the University of Washington Outstanding Public Service Award for 2010, presented to a faculty or staff member to honor extensive local and or national and international service. Terrie participates in a huge amount of committee work at the state and national level on behalf of improving the health of the marine environment.

Lab 7 is remodeled to be used as a new ocean acidification facility and its enormous racetrack flume is dismantled, repaired, and installed as an outdoor flume under a new roof between Labs 4 and 5.


This site is maintained by C. E. Mills; images should not be used without permission.
** This page was established November 2004; last updated 21 November 2010 **

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