The Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences is the home for the long-standing Provasoli-Guillard National Center for Culture of Marine Phytoplankton (CCMP). CCMP is the largest US collection of marine phytoplankton. The domestic user base is wide-ranging and includes academe, industry, government labs and education. Because the collection is extensive and well-known, CCMP serves a large international user base as well. Bigelow Laboratory and the (CCMP) have demonstrated that they can operate a large and highly used marine algal culture collection. This laboratory is an excellent site for these collections because of its many scientists who are dedicated to marine research on microscopic organisms. The facility is situated on the Gulf of Maine, and it has many years of experience successfully operating the CCMP. This grant provides five years of maintenance support for CCMP.
Cultures of marine archaea, bacteria, and viruses are made available to a diversity of researchers saving them time and expense of collecting the organisms from the oceans of the world. The Bigelow Laboratory also offers courses, workshops, and internships for high school and college students.
