An Entrepreneur of the Social Sciences

Marine Lab Director Brings an Anthropologist's View and a Connection to the Sea to the Facilitation Table p.5

Ground also was broken last April for the biggest new project to date: a “green,” $2 million 5,000-square-foot academic building that will provide a high-tech teaching center while conforming to the highest standards for energy and environmental efficiency.

“It will have geothermal heating and cooling and will be oriented to the natural prevailing winds for ventilation, with a courtyard that looks out toward the ocean and estuary,” he says excitedly. “That’s really a new concept on the island. Everything before has been inward-directed —inside your laboratory, inside the quad. We’ve never really looked out at this beautiful environment we’re in.”

Another accomplishment is recreating a natural marsh planted with natural grasses along 500 feet of shoreline that was formerly rimmed with a concrete bulkhead. “It’s the largest project of its kind that’s been done in North Carolina,” he says proudly. “It’s a natural protective environment.”

Orbach also is working with officials at adjoining NOAA marine research facilities to plan a jogging trail around the entirety of Pivers Island and other shared facilities.

Now that funding has been completed for the teaching center, Orbach says his next money-raising challenge will be to replace the leaky, energy-inefficient multistory Bookhout Research Lab with “three or maybe four lower profile, state-of-the-art, architecturally compatible buildings.

“The idea would be to build the new buildings first, and then take the Bookhout lab down, using its footprint for a new seawater research facility.

“Some of the brick rubble from that building could go in an artificial reef,” he adds. “I think C.G. Bookhout would think it a great honor for the building that originally bore his name to be a habitat for the marine organisms he loved.”

That may be Orbach’s greatest legacy at Duke—preserving tradition and helping to conserve ocean resources, while bringing the Duke Marine Lab into the 21st century.

Monte Basgall is a senior writer with Duke’s Office of News and Communications and specializes in science coverage.

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