A Lab for Troubled Waters.

• Author: Steif, William
• Position: St. Croix laboratory - Brief Article

THE ST. CROIX-BASED West. Indies Laboratory, chief source of scientific data on the Caribbean Sea for two decades before its destruction by Hurricane Hugo in 1989, is coming back to life.

The marine biology lab, built and run by New Jersey's Fairleigh Dickinson University on nine-and-a-half acres, will be the site of a new research facility being formed by four U.S. universities under U.S. Interior Department guidance.

The department, headed by Secretary Brace Babbitt, formed the U.S. Reef Task Force early in 1999, leading to the creation last November of the new Joint Institute for Caribbean Marine Studies.

Collaborating are the University of North Carolina-Wilmington (UNCW), the University of South Carolina, New Jersey's Rutgers University, and the University of the Virgin Islands. The four not only will do Caribbean-wide research but also offer undergraduate and graduate marine science courses, just as the West Indies Lab did for twenty years. The institute's board initially will be chaired by former U.S. senator Lowell Weicker, a longtime St. Croix property owner.

Robert Wicklund, a marine biologist and federal programs director for UNCW, says the institute has "come to agreement" on leasing the old lab site and dock. The National Science Foundation long ago committed itself to a $500,000 grant if the lab were revived, and Betty Dickinson, widow of lab founder Fairleigh Dickinson, Jr., also committed herself to a major donation.

Says Wicklund, who worked for Weicker in the Senate, "Something's got to be done, because of the degradation of the coral reefs, not only in the Virgin Islands but all around the Caribbean."

Fish habitats in many areas are in terrible shape, he says. Last fall, for instance, he took five dives around the Virgin Islands and saw only "two individual predators, a barracuda and a mackerel," meaning that fish had been virtually wiped out.

"On a really healthy reef," Wicklund explains, "you'll find schools...