In 1987, at the direction of Drs. Robert Kifer (then Director of the
NOAA/NMFS Charleston laboratory) and Paul Sandifer (then Director of the
SCDNR’s
Division of Marine Resources, and later Director of the
SCDNR), a joint position paper was prepared by staff of the
NOAA Charleston Laboratory (now the
NOS Center for Coastal
Environmental Health and Biomolecular Research [CCEHBR]), the
SCDNR
Marine Resources Division, and the South Carolina Sea Grant
Consortium. This “white paper” was the first step in the
development of a new cooperative science facility designed to address the effects
of environmental and anthropogenic stress in coastal and marine environments.
Over the next six years, needs and interests were more fully defined, and formal
agreements were developed between the initial partners and with two academic partners
of long standing—the
College of Charleston and the
Medical University of South Carolina of which already had facilities
and personnel located at the South Carolina Marine Resources Center on Charleston
Harbor. During this planning process, the focus of the multi-disciplinary effort
was broadened to include evaluation of the effects of changes in the marine environment
on human health.
In January 1994, an initial
NOAA appropriation provided funding for the partners to undertake a detailed
facility requirements study, and a Laboratory Planning Team was assembled with representatives
from each of the four participating institutions. This Planning Team, accompanied
by representatives of the A/E firm, toured a variety of marine research laboratories
on the East, West, Gulf, and Great Lakes coasts of the United States, including
facilities involved in fisheries, molecular 
biology, environmental chemistry, and
other areas of scientific investigation. None of the numerous facilities visited
or contacted combined the broad range of disciplines at the level of scientific
integration envisioned for the HML
within a single laboratory. The lessons learned, however, allowed the Laboratory
Planning Team to design a unique facility for addressing a wide range of contemporary
marine research needs related to
NOAA’s missions in a true interdisciplinary fashion. Because
of the focus and strength of the partnership, in 1994 the
HML planning team received an honorable mention for Vice President
Gore’s “Reinventing Government Award”. In June 1995, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) formally
joined the laboratory partnership.
The state of South Carolina provided the necessary land for the facility at the South
Carolina Marine Resources Center under a 50-year essentially no-cost lease to the
federal government. Congress appropriated a total of almost $50 million to NOAA over
several years (1994-2005) to support design and construction of the
HML, and annual operating funds were appropriated beginning in FY
2000. NIST
provided additional construction and equipment funds. Facility design was a joint
activity of all five participating institutions. Each of the institutions made substantial
commitments of faculty and scientific staff time and expertise for the design, planning,
implementation and ongoing operation of the joint enterprise over more than a decade.
The collaborative laboratory was originally called the "Marine Environmental Health
Research Laboratory (MEHRL)", but was renamed the "Hollings Marine Laboratory" in
honor of South Carolina’s Senator Ernest F. Hollings in 2000. The HML, as a laboratory
of the NOS National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science, became fully operational
in 2004. In 2004 the HML was awarded the honor of becoming one of three Centers
of Excellence in Oceans and Human Health through the NOAA Oceans and Human Health Initiative.
The Center brought expertise of all the the HML partners to bear on questions related
to (1) source tracking of marine pathogens; (2) emerging chemical contaminants;
(3) applied marine genomics; and (4) monitoring, assessment, and prediction.
On April 13, 2008 the NCCOS was reorganized to include the Center for Human Health
Risk located at the Hollings Marine Laboratory. Within the Center two branches were
authorized. A research branch, Oceans and Human Health, was created to conduct research
to understand and forecast relationships between coastal ocean ecosystems and human
health and well-being and to convey the information and tools available to managers
and public health officials. The Research Coordination and Administrative Support
Branch supports both the research branch and the Hollings Marine Laboratory as they
conduct work to advance NOAA's mission to understand and predict changes in Earth’s
environment, and conserve and manage coastal and marine resources to meet our Nation’s
economic, social, and environmental needs.