At a marine field station, rising seas force an inevitable retreat

The scientists at a New Jersey marine station are conducting a sobering experiment: monitoring the destruction of their facility from rising waters. Oscar-winning filmmaker Thomas Lennon shows how the researchers are working to produce useful science before they must leave.

The researchers at the Rutgers Marine Field Station are getting a close-up view of the impacts of climate change. From their lab perched in New Jersey’s coastal waters, they are monitoring the inexorable advance of rising seas that they know will force them to abandon the station where many have worked for years.

In “Marine Field Station: THE RETREAT,” Academy Award-winning filmmaker Thomas Lennon, along with a team of Rutgers University students, captures the quiet beauty of the station’s setting on the edge of a lush, unspoiled marsh. And he shows how the scientists have decided to turn their seaside predicament into a research opportunity, as they study the effects of sea level rise on the marine life and surrounding ecosystem.

“We can study that transformation of the marsh as it happens, right here, until we have to let [the station] go,” fish ecologist Thomas Grothues says. The goal, he says, is to record “what’s happening here and then withdraw from that in a graceful way, while learning something from it.”