Friday Harbor laboratories: experimental biology at the water's edge

The University of Washington's marine field station, the Friday Harbor Laboratories (FHL), has been a center for diverse biological research for over 100 years. The facility is a complete mini-campus with housing and dining facilities. Experimental biologists visit from all over the world to focus intensively on their research efforts, an endeavor that is made possible by state-of-the-art equipment and biologically diverse local habitats. FHL also offers courses and short workshops that use local marine organisms and common-use equipment to train the next generation of scientists in fields as diverse as natural history to evolutionary development of invertebrates to biomechanics of fishes. Particularly strong areas of focus over the long history of FHL include comparative biomechanics (of everything from seaweed to sharks), developmental biology, neurophysiology and other physiology, genomics and marine ecology. Recent interactions of FHL researchers with other specialists ranging from engineers to restoration practitioners keep FHL on the cutting edge of research.