OXFORD, Miss. – Ray Highsmith got a big surprise recently
when he returned to Kasitsna Bay, Alaska, for an open house
celebrating the grand reopening of a laboratory he directed
for more than 20 years. They named the renovated facility
in his honor.
Highsmith, executive director of the National Institute for
Undersea Science and Technology and director of the
University of Mississippi Field Station, was honored for
establishing university research and teaching programs at
the lab and helping raise more than $12 million for
improvements as the facility’s operations director from
1983 to 2005.
The facility, on Alaska’s Kenai Penisula, was renamed the
Dr. Raymond C. Highsmith Laboratory. Highsmith cut the
ribbon (made of sea kelp) for the renovated facility as
about 130 people cheered.
“I was surprised and honored,” Highsmith said. “Seeing this
wonderful new facility, after so many years of hard work
even just to survive, really is a dream come true and
should benefit students, teachers and researchers for
decades to come.”
The Kasitsna Bay Laboratory is owned by the National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Centers
for Coastal Ocean Science and operated in partnership with
the School of Fisheries and Ocean Sciences at the
University of Alaska Fairbanks.
The upgraded complex includes a 48-person dormitory and
bunkhouse, scuba locker, shop, classrooms and a
5,000-square-foot laboratory building with five dry labs
and a 1,400-square-foot wet lab. The new facilities should
enable NOAA and UAF to expand research and education in
marine science and monitor the response of coastal
ecosystems to change.
The open house also celebrated the 200th anniversary of
NOAA, which started in 1807 as the Coast and Geodetic
Survey.
For more information on the lab, go to