Plymouth Marine Laboratory

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Plymouth Marine Laboratory (sometimes referred to as PML) in the city of Plymouth, England is an independent collaborative centre of the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Its chief executive is Professor Nicholas Owens and its chairman is Lord Christopher Kingsland.

PML is one of a number of organisations represented on the European Boards for Marine & Polar Science (EMaPS) and has several ships at its disposal; it currently takes frequent water samples near the Eddystone Lighthouse.

The Laboratory's biodiversity work addresses three major challenges:

Elucidating the relationships between species, area and distance within the marine environment.
Defining and describing the main processes responsible for determining and maintaining biodiversity at different (spatial) scales.
Determining the ecological consequences of changes in biodiversity.

[edit] History

The Plymouth Marine Laboratory was founded in 1988, mainly due to the recommendations of a House of Lords Report. It was formed by a merger of the Laboratory of the Marine Biological Association (MBA) with the NERC Institute for Marine Environmental Research (IMER).

On 1 April 2002, PML changed from being a wholly owned NERC research centre to an independent organisation with charitable status.