February 1998
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ECOS Professor Heads Effort
to Build New Bedford AquariumA new aquarium complex is now taking shape in New Bedford. When it is completed, it will be one of the largest in the world, with a combined tank capacity of over 2 million gallons. One single tank alone will hold 1.2 million gallons. Apart from sheer size, it's four components -- the Aquarium, the Explorium,The Center for Science Education and Economic Development (SEED), and a Large Format Film Theater (LFFT) -- will make it unique among aquariums of the world.
Professor Robert Bowen of the ECOS program has lived in New Bedford for the last 14 years, and has been active there in community affairs. Several years ago, he was approached by the two co-founders of the aquarium project, Maureen Armstrong and Frederick Satkin, who asked him to join the aquarium project.
"My first response was 'Thanks, but I have a great job, and a full life,'" says Bowen. "And Satkin responded, 'Fine, I understand. Will you come and see the building?' I walked into the great room of the former COM/Electric power plant, which is 350 feet long and nine stories high, and I said, 'Ok, when do we start?' It is a building meant to be an aquarium," says Bowen, who is now executive director of the New Bedford Aquarium.
Bowen was won over by the unique opportunity to recycle an extraordinary building to a new use that would be particularly well-suited to New Bedford. As an expert in integrated coastal management in urban harbor settings, he was able to see the unique potential in the COM /Electric building, with its site directly on the harbor. But it is also the opportunity to tell important stories of marine science in so many different ways that sustains his enthusiasm.
The four components of the project allow for many different ways to tell that story. The aquarium will be fitted to take visitors to polar, temperate, and tropical marine systems; The Center for Science Education and Economic Development (SEED) will support partnerships between university researchers and the private and public sectors to generate economic innovation and activity; the Explorium will provide visitors with interactive exhibits to promote understanding of how the latest developments in marine science result from exploration and discovery; and the Large Format Film Theater (LFFT) will take visitors to underwater places they could only imagine otherwise.
The Aquarium, with its projected attendance of 1,360,000 visitors annually, may also prove to be a catalyst for other development projects in New Bedford, including the expansion of the New Bedford Airport, new economic activity in downtown New Bedford, and rail service between Boston and New Bedford.
It may also provide UMass Boston faculty with more ways to do their job -- by reaching out into the community to teach in the broadest sense. "Universities need to get better at telling their stories so that others understand them," says Bowen, who believes that the aquarium can facilitate that mission.
The project is presently in a very active stage -- Bowen says that he expects there to be announcements on project funding within the next 60 days. (The cost of the project is expected to be $124 million, which supporters hope will come entirely from private sources.)
Teaching in the ECOS program remains Bowen's primary job. Over the past several years, the number of graduate students he advises has ranged from a low of 7 to as many as 13. This semester, he is teaching a seminar on the role of science in the policy process.
In the end, Bowen expects that the aquarium will prove a resource -- for New Bedford, for our University, and for the region -- by establishing a place where the stories of marine science, of the ocean and the environment, can be told in many different ways.