Narragansett Laboratory

Our Narragansett, Rhode Island Laboratory houses a wide variety of research projects

Our Location

The Narragansett Laboratory is uniquely located on three acres of federally owned land overlooking Narragansett Bay and adjacent to the University of Rhode Island’s Graduate School of Oceanography and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Atlantic Ecology Division. This location allows us to work closely with international, federal, regional, state, and academic scientists, and to participate in undergraduate and graduate education programs as advisers and students. Our proximity to several major fishing fleets, including Point Judith, Rhode Island, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, helps our collaborations and reminds us of the immediate effects of our research.



Our Leadership


Our History

Originally built for the Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Sportfish and Wildlife and dedicated in October 1966, the lab moved to NOAA Fisheries in 1970 and has been operated since by the Northeast Fisheries Science Center. Several of the early programs are still active, resulting in the longest continuous shark tagging program in the United States and one of the largest plankton and oceanographic data archives in the region. Other programs that were once active at the lab, including the research aquarium facility and Narragansett Bay Project, have since made way for new areas of research such as collaborations with the fishing industry and development of tools and techniques for ecosystem-based fisheries management.

Black and white group photo of several men and women standing and sitting on grass around a NOAA building sign with a big tree in the background.
Professional staff of the Narragansett Laboratory in 1981. Kneeling left to right: Carolyn Griswold, Jerome Prezioso, Jane Allen, H. Wes Pratt, Tom Caldwell. Standing left to right: Kenneth Sherman, Cynthia Jones, Julian Goulet, Jennie Dunnington, Peggy Lamoureux, Donna Busch, Loretta Sullivan, Tom McKenny, Robert Marak, Frank Castaldi, Reva Kuhlman, Dave Dillman, Al Smigielski, Louise Andsager, Larry Buckley, Tom Halavik, Ray Maurer, Jack Green, Chris Powell, Chris Philpott, Chuck Stillwell, Joe Kane, Jack Casey, Bill Cheeseman, Geoff Laurence, Bruce Burns.