James G. Morin, the Henry E. and Nancy Horton Bartels Director of Shoals Marine Laboratory, in his Stimson Hall office. Robert Barker/University Photography
A marine biologist dedicated to undergraduate education, James G. Morin has a classroom in which he has students' undivided attention. The Henry E. and Nancy Horton Bartels Director of Shoals Marine Laboratory presides over Appledore Island, six miles off the Maine-New Hampshire coast, and students who arrive weekly by boat are quickly immersed, full time, in the lessons of the sea.
That's fine with most students, who may select individual courses like field marine ecology, bioacoustical oceanography and underwater archaeology or stay on the 95-acre island for the summer to earn a semester's worth of credits in three rigorous months. They are living and learning in an environment that is unique in its accessibility and isolation.
"Of course I'm biased, but I think Shoals is the best place in the world to learn marine science," said the director of the seasonal program, which is run by Cornell and the University of New Hampshire and has its year-round headquarters at Cornell's Stimson Hall. Morin himself has studied around the world, conducting his research off all the continents and major oceans -- much of it underwater in the dark of night.
Morin's arrival in Ithaca last year from the University of California at Los Angeles, where he had taught since 1969, is testament to the continuing ability of Cornell to attract faculty with wide-ranging interests. Morin is also a professor of marine biology, which sees him doing some teaching in the Section of Ecology and Systematics (where his wife, Myra Shulman, is a senior research associate specializing in reef ecology) -- although not nearly enough to suit an inveterate educator.
After earning his B.A. (1965) at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Morin went on to receive his M.A. (1967) and Ph.D. (1969) at Harvard University.
The 55-year-old scientist is best known outside the marine biology field for his discoveries with the green fluorescent protein GFP, a molecule now widely used as a reporter of gene expression in genetically engineered organisms. As with many initial discoveries, Morin never profited from his basic pioneering research because the cloning technology on GFP occurred subsequent to his pivotal findings.
Nighttime is when life gets interesting for a specialist in bioluminescence, the chemical generation of visible light by organisms. In more than a quarter-century of study, Morin has gone further than anyone in the field in explaining the mechanisms, functions and evolution of light emission of organisms ranging from bacteria and jellyfish to crustaceans and fishes. Since 1980 he has been working with ostracodes, the sesame seed-sized crustaceans that appear shortly after sunset like fireflies of the sea.
"Male ostracodes swim fast -- this is equivalent to me swimming one and a half football fields in a second -- while they're squirting a Morse code pattern of luminescence in their wake," he explained. "Some species display for just a few inches and others for many yards; some move downwards in the water and others, upwards. Some make slow pulses of luminescence and others are like little strobe lights. Some swim and display in formation, but they never waste their energy luminescing during a full moon."
What are the functions of a display that would seem to make creatures vulnerable to predators? Morin has several answers: Of foremost importance, the distinctive patterns produced by many of the 60 known species of ostracodes attract females of the appropriate species. But courtship is just Act One of this well-lit drama. Ostracodes practice internal fertilization, so having mated, the females go off to incubate their embryos (which also glow) inside their bodies. That removes so many eligible females from the scene that the male-to-female ratio of amorous individuals is soon 100-to-1 or even 1000-to-1. The luminescing males must compete not only with scores of equally bright males but also with "silent" non-signaling males that are attracted to the light show and try to dart in to mate with the rare unmated females.
Luminescence also can deter predators, as Morin is demonstrating in his studies of various glowing creatures. When attracted by a predator the ostracode emits a cloud of bright light that attracts predators of the predator, which then consume the threat to the ostracode often before the ostracode is eaten -- the so-called "burglar-alarm effect." Morin also has studied a marine scaleworm that initially emits flashes of light to startle and temporarily blind its predators. If this fails, the worm then sheds its scales -- which also contain a controlling ganglion -- to produce flickering-glowing objects that divert predators from the dark worm. "The function changes from startle to decoy, and the worm gets away," Morin said.
"In ostracodes we still have no idea why females choose particular males," said the biologist. In the laboratory he hopes to observe ostracode mating behavior in the dark, using image-intensified optical equipment as well as ultraviolet light, invisible to ostracodes, as back-lighting. In other experiments, Morin wants to determine pattern recognition behavior by using computer-controlled light-emitting diodes to mimic the luminescent patterns in columns of water filled with ostracodes.
Eager to share his research with undergraduates, Morin hopes to expand the offerings at Shoals Marine Laboratory. In the past students have been able to add a week or so of research after completing certain courses on Appledore Island. The director's most ambitious proposal, a fall temperate-tropical field semester, would begin with four weeks on Appledore Island in September, while weather in the Gulf of Maine is still tolerable. The students would return to Cornell in October for data analysis, then travel to Mexico until Thanksgiving for more research. The students would then complete their analyses, papers and presentations back on campus and would have "developed an appreciation for the global scale of marine science problems that you can't get any other way," Morin said.
His one regret is that the duties of laboratory director -- recruiting, fundraising and administration -- keep him too far from the campus classroom. Fortunately, a briny "classroom" awaits off the New England coast, home to scaleworms and brittlestars and other glow-in-the-dark organisms that may yield their remarkable secrets to students who learn to ask the right questions.
Shoals Marine Laboratory is Cornell's "window on the sea," strategically isolated six miles offshore in the Gulf of Maine, yet easily accessible by ferry. Each summer the Appledore Island resonates with 16 marine field courses that educate up to 250 undergraduates, four adult education courses, and a host of other marine, environmental and history-related activities. The diverse undergraduate curriculum includes: Field Marine Science, Coastal Ecology and Bioclimates, Biacoustical Oceanography and Biological Illustration. Adult education courses in 1998 are Life at Sea, An Island Through Time, Island Bird Study and A Garden is a Sea of Flowers. The marine laboratory was established in 1973.
The program's previous directors were John M. Kingsbury, 1973-79; John B. Heiser, 1979-95; Patricia McGill, 1995; and Brian R. Rivest, 1995-97. More information on Shoals Marine Laboratory is available by calling 255-3717 or visiting the lab's web site at http://www.sml.cornell.edu/.
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