The Murmansk Marine Biological Institute – one of the most northern academic institutes in the world where fundamental and scientific engineering problems of the modern marine biology, oceanography and ecology are solved.

It is the oldest establishment of the Russian Science Academy in the North. Since 1935 the institute has been investigating northern seas, gradually expanding the range of its works from Dalnezelenetsky bay to the ocean space from Iceland to the Laptev Sea. Since 1996 The Murmansk Marine Biological Institute has included southern seas in the sphere of its attention, that is why the institute is focusing on the Barents sea and the Sea of Azov.

Let’s have a look at the acting temporary station.

The story of the institute began in the second half of the 19th century when in 1881 there was established the first Russian marine biological station at the initiative of the St. Petersburg naturalists community.

In the end of the 19th century the biological station moved closer to the Arctic, in 1935 its successor became the Murmansk Biological Station of the Academy of Science of the USSR that was reorganized into the Murmansk Marine Biological Institute in 1958. In 1989 it moved to Murmansk city.

In 1998 there was opened an oceanography and biology department in Rostov-on-Don, since 2001 the Azov branch has been working. In 1999 there was opened the Northern marine biological station in the Kola Bay and in 2001 for the first time there was launched scientific base reconstruction at Spitsbergen archipelago where the institute took an active part.

Annually at the station more than 100 researches from different RAS institutes and other establishments do their scientific work, students of various institutes of higher education come here on training.

The station seems to be suspended and then totally plundered. The abandoned houses began to ruin in that climate and now the main building of the institute represents a pitiful sight.

Neuron.

Library.

Some kind of laboratories…

Cabinets with extraction for work with chemicals.

Infernal powder…

The administrative part.

Laboratories.

As a part of the roof lacks the top storey is simply rotting…

Soon water will be here too…

On the floor moss is living.

Attic with no roof.

View at the outskirts…

…and at Dalniye Zelentsy settlement. Houses on the right also belong to the institute but they look pitiful too.

Water intake for the seaquarium.

The main building with a little tower with no roof against the background of the bay and the settlement.

The only alive thing found in the settlement.

And this laboratory that studies algae. Even some repair work has been done here…