San Francisco State University is preparing to close its Estuary and Ocean Science Center, citing financial challenges.
Katharyn Boyer, interim executive director of the center, said students, faculty, and community members have been using the facility to learn about and monitor the health of the Bay for decades.
"We use this entire shoreline as a living laboratory, too," she said. "It makes me quite sad to think that we won't have our own place right here where we can test something like this."
Boyer said the center's location in Tiburon created one of Northern California's unique marine research sites, allowing scientists and researchers to travel on boats to collect samples and perform experiments on-site.
Millions of dollars worth of grants from deferral, regional, and private researchers are tied to the site, yet it has become too expensive to maintain. Boyer has been working to find additional funding but has come up short about $600,000.
Without a long-term commitment from another university or a private funder, SFSU has decided to close the campus and move its research and teaching to the main campus.
"We'd be better serving more students on the main campus than maintaining an entirely separate campus for a smaller number, proportionally, of students that are going out there," said Amy Sueyoshi, provost of the university.
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The entire Cal State system has experienced a decline in enrollment. At SFSU, there are now 9,000 fewer students than there were 10 years ago.
The university has owned and operated the Tiburon campus since 1978 but has not announced a closure date.
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In the meantime, university leaders and researchers hope another school or organization will step in to take it over.
"I feel like now, more than ever, we really need facilities like this that are doing solid, meaningful, applied science," said Davis Nelson, a graduate student working on a project for the U.S. Geological Survey.
