King Delivers Keynote Address at Bigelow’s 40th Anniversary

The Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay celebrated its 40th anniversary with a formal program, laboratory tours, and a reception on June 27. U.S. Sen. Angus King delivered the keynote address in front of a crowd of about 100.

The 10 speakers on the program also included Mary Bigelow, granddaughter of Henry Bryant Bigelow, for whom the facility was named. An audio message from U.S. Sen. Susan Collins was played as well.

Laboratory tours were conducted following the program with the celebration concluding with a reception and light refreshments.

Sen. King began with comments about the U.S. Senate and his experiences in Washington, D.C.

King said while he finds his fellow senators are “generally people who want to help the people and are patriotic and have serious intent,” he was surprised at the lack of cooperation.

“I’ve never been in an organization with more good people that gets less done,” King said. “The good news I can tell you is that there are more and more senators who are getting fed up with it.”

King said the agreement brokered by Collins between 14 senators during the federal government shutdown of October 2013 brought together a diverse group of Republicans and Democrats.

“Out of that has come an impulse among this very small group of senators in both parties to try to find a way how to work better,” King said.

King said the Senate is “very divided politically right now, but I’m hopeful that we’re going to be able to overcome that to try to move the country forward.”

In the second part of his address, King told of how he has gotten to know other senators better by attending weekly prayer breakfasts. He said it is his favorite hour of the week, both for the quiet respite and the fact that it is “the only bipartisan event of the week.”

“The reason I find it so valuable is that each week a different senator is asked to present something about their faith and their history,” King said. “The fascinating thing is to learn the backgrounds of these interesting people.”

King concluded his address by stressing the importance of science.

“So many of our public policy issues rest upon science,” King said. “The biggest one, of course, is climate change.”

King said he wants to know why climate change is argued on a partisan basis.

“It’s like arguing whether or not light travels at 186,000 miles a second,” King said. “That’s just science. That’s not politics.”

King said the Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences started with one boat 40 years ago.

“It’s wonderful to be able to be here and congratulate this wonderful institution,” King said. “Here we are making contributions both to the Maine economy and to the world’s knowledge. What could be better than that?”

Following King’s opening speech, Bigelow Executive Director Graham Shimmield introduced the audio message from Collins by saying she had walked in the mud at the groundbreaking ceremony for the new facility on Sept. 7, 2010.

“She’s been very instrumental in helping us achieve the building we’re enjoying here today, including the support for the federal construction funds,” Shimmield said. “I think she really does demonstrate the power of private and public partnerships.”

In her message, Collins congratulated the leadership, staff, and supporters of Bigelow.

“From single-cell microbes to satellite images from space, this great institution has advanced our understanding of marine ecosystems,” Collins said. “Bigelow has brought distinction to our state and valuable knowledge to our world.”

According to Collins, Henry Bryant Bigelow would be proud that much of the work and research done in the labs is focused on the Gulf of Maine that he loved.

“He would be prouder still that his vision of oceanography as the mother science that embraces all disciplines has become a reality,” Collins said.

Collins said that Bigelow’s mission goes beyond the acquisition of knowledge to creating opportunities in research, education, and technology development.

Collins singled out the laboratory’s Colby College semester-in-residence program as “an outstanding collaboration that is helping to produce the next generation of ocean scientists.”

According to Collins, Henry Bigelow devoted his brilliant scientific mind to understanding “that all life is connected and that we humans must be its responsible stewards.”

Collins offered her congratulations on a job well done and said, “I look forward to our continued collaboration.”

Several other audio messages were played, interspersed with speeches from local officials and members of Bigelow’s board of trustees.

Bigelow research technician Alex Vermont also spoke. He first came to the research facility while a student at Northern Arizona University in Yuma participating in Bigelow’s research experience for undergraduates.

“As I reflect on my time here, I can’t help but appreciate that 10 weeks at Bigelow opened up a life time of opportunities,” Vermont said. “So what has Bigelow meant to me and my career? To put it simply, it’s meant everything.”

Mary Bigelow, granddaughter of Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences namesake Henry Bryant Bigelow, speaks at the laboratory’s 40th anniversary program in East Boothbay on Friday, June 27. (Tim Badgley photo)

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The final guest speaker on the program was Mary Bigelow, the granddaughter of Henry Bryant Bigelow.

Bigelow said her grandfather would be enormously pleased and proud to “see all the energy and life that’s going into the work that he started.”

According to Bigelow, family lore has it that her grandfather highly prized his relationships with his graduate students.

“I’m delighted to hear from Alex that such a relationship between student and professor is ongoing and is important and is the lifeblood of an institution such as this.”

Bigelow read a quote from her grandfather in which he described the interconnected relationships between marine chemistry, physics, geology, animals, and plants. Connecting that web “is the conscious aim of oceanographers,” Bigelow read from her grandfather’s text.

“This laboratory is the most marvelous exemplar of this conscious aim of combining the geology, the physics, the biology that are all represented in the ocean,” Bigelow said. “It is a great honor and great pleasure to see that what he started has come to this enormous blossoming and that his passion and his love of his students has gone forward into this very fruitful institution that can so well serve the world.”