Buffalo State College President Muriel A. Howard, Ph.D., broke out the bubbly to officially christen the college's new research vessel, Seneca, in ceremonies held Thursday, July 19, at the college's Great Lakes Center for Environmental Research and Education field station.

The 46-foot vessel, formerly a buoy tender, was obtained from the U.S. Coast Guard last fall. Built in the early 1960s, it was stationed in Buffalo until it was placed in surplus and ownership transferred to the New York State Office of Government Services. Buffalo State College's Great Lakes Center purchased the boat from the state for $5,000 - a bargain, considering it is worth about $100,000, according to Boat Captain and Field Station Manager John Freidhoff.

Designed for forward and aft maneuverability, the black and white barge-shaped vessel features dual steering wheels and a Schottel drive swiveling propeller that allows the vessel to be piloted forward and backward and turn on its vertical axis 360 degrees. The two-legged hoist that looms over its stern can raise 5,000 pounds. "It can handle heavy lifting, and will be used in deep oceanographic work on the Great Lakes to deploy large instrument packages and pull bigger nets," explained Freidhoff, who added that Research Vessel Seneca is equipped with a WAMSS-based Garmin GPS system.

After its christening, Research Vessel Seneca traveled to Messena, New York, via the Erie Canal to spend the month on an environmental impact study for the New York Power Authority catching and tagging American eels before they migrate down the Saint Lawrence seaway to the ocean to spawn.

Named to honor the importance of the Seneca Nation to Western New York and recognize its contribution to environmentalism, Research Vessel Seneca is the largest of the Great Lakes Center's 20 vessels - one other larger than 40 feet, one 26 feet and about 17 smaller than 20 feet.

Buffalo State College's Great Lakes Center for Environmental Research and Education links high-quality research with graduate and undergraduate education with a focus on the unique ecological issues of the Great Lakes Basin. It is the only SUNY center to operate an on-shore experimental laboratory on the Great Lakes and to offer a graduate program in Great Lakes Environmental Studies. The center brings together more than 20 affiliated faculty from seven academic departments with particular emphasis on the specialties of watershed hydrology, water quality, environmental toxicology and chemistry, aquatic ecology, fisheries, urban ecology and environmental education. In addition, the Great Lakes Center promotes collaborative research with other academic and research institutions in the United States and Canada and is a member of the Great Lakes Research Consortium.

The Great Lakes Center consists of a complex of laboratories, including environmental toxicology, chemistry, microbiology and computer laboratories on the main campus and an aquatic research laboratory on 3.5 acres at the confluence of Lake Erie and the Niagara River. The field station is equipped with fish and zooplankton culture rooms, acoustic instrumentation for fish abundance measures, a data visualization laboratory, flow-through experimental laboratories, classroom facilities, a library and a variety of computer systems and work stations.

Fish and plankton are cultured in more than 180 tanks ranging in size from five to 900 gallons with either static or fully automated flow-through capabilities and the ability to vary light intensities and wave lengths to simulate appropriate depths for various species.

The Great Lakes Center maintains a state-of-the-art environmental toxicology laboratory to study a variety of problems affecting the water quality of the Great Lakes and their contributing waters. Principal research focuses on the sm of carcinogenesis of polynuclear aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), disposition and metabolism of toxic chemicals in fish, microbial degradation of hazardous chemicals and monitoring levels of environmental chemicals.

The center maintains a fleet of research vessels capable of supporting a variety of operations. The 46-foot Seneca along with the 40-foot Aquarius and a 26-foot boat are deep-water vessels that can deploy a variety of water and biological sampling devices, electronic monitoring equipment and lake-bottom imaging devices. They are the only research vessels on the Great Lakes in the SUNY system.