Dear friends and colleagues!

The history of the Institute of Marine Biology began a little earlier than the official date of the establishment of the Institute. At the end of 1965, Dr. Biol. Sci. Aleksey Zhirmunsky, the Scientific Secretary in the Institute of Cytology of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (Leningrad, now St.Petersburg), received an offer from the leadership of the Academy of Sciences to write a note about perspectives for the development of marine biology in the Far East. The note was written, several scientific reports were done, and in September of 1966 the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR decided to organize the Department of Marine Biology within the Far Eastern Branch of the Siberian Branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

The Department of Marine Biology was established in the early 1967 with two laboratories – hydrobiology and experimental ecology. The first researchers of the future institute came from all over the country – from Leningrad, Moscow, Sukhumi, and Simferopol. They were the Knights of Science and the Romanticists of the Sea, who laid the foundation of marine biological research on the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

In summer months of 1967, Dr. Biol. Sci. Oleg Kussakin and seven employees of the newly organized institute went on the first survey expedition to the intertidal areas of the Kuril Islands.

On January 1, 1970, the Department was officially reorganized into the Institute of Marine Biology of the Far Eastern Scientific Center of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Academician Aleksey Zhirmunsky, who led the Institute during 20 years from the moment of organization, Academician Oleg Kussakin, the founder of a large school of marine hydrobiologists in the Far East, and Academician Vladimir Kasyanov, who saved the Institute in difficult 90s years, played a significant role in organization and establishment of the Institute and indicated the directions of research. Academician Andrey Adrianov, who refined and developed the legacy of his predecessors, is presently the Scientific Supervisor (President) of the National Scientific Center of Marine Biology.

Since the first years after its foundation, the Institute has been actively developing. The scientific journal “Biologiya Morya” established in 1975 is published in Russian and English (now Russian Journal of Marine Biology) and indexed by the bibliographic database Web of Science. The biological stations were established in Kamchatka, Sakhalin and Primorsky Krai; and the Junior Academy of Marine Biology, the system of professional training for high school students, was organized. To preserve and study the unique marine biota of the Peter the Great Bay of the Sea of Japan, the Far Eastern Marine Reserve was established in 1978.

During the last fifty years, the Institute has developed into a powerful National Scientific Center of Marine Biology, more than hundred sea expeditions have been conducted in different areas of the Pacific and Indian oceans, three centers of collective use of unique and expensive scientific equipment were created, over 400 monographs and more than 5000 articles have been published in Russian and foreign scientific journals, and grand Primorsky Aquarium was established. Our Scientific Centre possesses modern underwater robot vehicles to explore the greatest depths of the World Ocean.  

In 2016, the Institute of Marine Biology, the Far Eastern Marine Reserve and the Primorsky Aquarium were united into one institution, A.V. Zhirmunsky National Scientific Center of Marine Biology  (NSCMB FEB RAS) , this opens up new opportunities for development of science and for popularization of the scientific knowledge.

Inessa Valeryevna Duyzen, Corr. Member of RAS, Acting Director of the NSCMB FEB RAS