The Victoria University Coastal Ecology Laboratory (VUCEL) is a research facility of the School of Biological Sciences at

Victoria University of Wellington Victoria University of Wellington ( mi, Te Herenga Waka) is a university in Wellington, New Zealand. It was established in 1897 by Act of Parliament, and was a constituent college of the University of New Zealand. The university is well know ...

that supports research in

coastal ecology A marine coastal ecosystem is a marine ecosystem which occurs where the land meets the ocean. Marine coastal ecosystems include many different types of marine habitats, such as estuaries and lagoons, salt marshes and mangrove forests, seagrass me ...

and

marine biology Marine biology is the scientific study of the biology of marine life, organisms in the sea. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies s ...

. Located at the southern end of the

North Island The North Island, also officially named Te Ika-a-Māui, is one of the two main islands of New Zealand, separated from the larger but much less populous South Island by the Cook Strait. The island's area is , making it the world's 14th-largest ...

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

, in

Island Bay Island Bay is a coastal suburb of Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, situated south of the city centre. Island Bay lies on the bay which shares its name, one of numerous small bays off Cook Strait and west of Lyall Bay. 500m offshore in ...

on Wellington's south coast, approximately 8 km south of the university's main campus, the laboratory overlooks

Cook Strait Cook Strait ( mi, Te Moana-o-Raukawa) separates the North and South Islands of New Zealand. The strait connects the Tasman Sea on the northwest with the South Pacific Ocean on the southeast. It is wide at its narrowest point,McLintock, A H, ...

and the exposed rocky reef systems of the

Taputeranga Marine Reserve Taputeranga Marine Reserve is a legally protected area of sea and coast along the southern edge of Wellington, in New Zealand. It was officially opened in September 2008. The reserve covers and includes all foreshore up to mean high water spring ...

.Gardner J., ed. (2008) ''The Taputeranga Marine Reserve''. First edition Publishers, Wellington New Zealand. 534p. VUCEL is known in

Māori Māori or Maori can refer to: Relating to the Māori people * Māori people of New Zealand, or members of that group * Māori language, the language of the Māori people of New Zealand * Māori culture * Cook Islanders, the Māori people of the C ...

as ''Te Toka Tū Moana'', which means "the surf-beaten rock that stands firm in the ocean". The Māori name is both a description of the VUCEL building (with natural design elements that give it the appearance of rising from the rocks of the Wellington south coast), and it is representative of the strong connections between land and sea that are the focus much of VUCEL-supported research. VUCEL is a purpose-built research facility designed by Pynenburg & Collins Architects Ltd with the internal laboratory spaces designed by Labworks Architecture Ltd, the research facility was completed in early 2009 and comprises an 816m² research space that includes 113m² of science laboratories, 168m² of wet laboratory facilities supplied with filtered and unfiltered flow-through seawater, and 161m² of oceanfront office space for up to 30 VUCEL research students, academics, and support staff. VUCEL provides a staging area for field-based research programmes along the Wellington south coast and surrounding regions. The lab maintains a small fleet of research vessels and vehicles, SCUBA diving facilities, research infrastructure, and instrumentation for field-based ecological research. VUCEL provides logistic support to research programmes in coastal ecology that are conducted in the

Wellington region Greater Wellington, also known as the Wellington Region (Māori: ''Te Upoko o te Ika''), is a non-unitary region of New Zealand that occupies the southernmost part of the North Island. The region covers an area of , and has a population of T ...

and throughout

, the

Indo-Pacific region The Indo-Pacific is a vast biogeographic region of Earth. In a narrow sense, sometimes known as the Indo-West Pacific or Indo-Pacific Asia, it comprises the tropical waters of the Indian Ocean, the western and central Pacific Ocean, and the ...

, and

Southern Ocean The Southern Ocean, also known as the Antarctic Ocean, comprises the southernmost waters of the World Ocean, generally taken to be south of 60° S latitude and encircling Antarctica. With a size of , it is regarded as the second-small ...

. Victoria University first proposed a marine lab along the south coast of Wellington in the 1920s but it was not until the 1960s that a lab was established.Putnam, G (1977
"A brief history of New Zealand marine biology."
''Tuatara'' 22:189-211. This predecessor to VUCEL, known as the Island Bay Marine Lab, occupied a building that was originally constructed as a shark liver oil processing plant by the Glaxo Company. This 1950's structure supported the marine biology programme of Victoria University until 2007, when it was demolished to make way for the new purpose-built coastal ecology laboratory.

References

External links

Official website
{{authority control Victoria University of Wellington Research institutes in New Zealand Buildings and structures in Wellington City 2000s architecture in New Zealand

See also

References

External links