Facilities

The St Abbs Marine Station is located in the Scottish seaside village of St Abbs.

Through a Collaboration Agreement signed in 2020 between the Marine Station and the University, our researchers have access to the 275 square metre research aquarium and separate 100,000 litre mesocosm facility.

The site boasts twin intake pipes that provide the entire facility with raw sea water and access to mechanically filtered and UV sterilized seawater. Moreover, the research aquarium has a clear roof to allow for natural light and was entirely built without the use of ferrous materials. This minimises the facility’s magnetic and electro-magnetic footprint making it the ideal place to study impacts of the electro-magnetic fields created by subsea electricity cables on marine species.

The University of Edinburgh’s FloWave facility enables cutting edge academic research on wave and tidal current interactions.

Consisting of a 30m circular concrete basin which contains a 25m diameter and 5m deep wave, the FloWave contains more than 2.4 million litres of water and is divided into upper and lower volumes, separated by a 1m thick moveable floor.

This facility allows for unrivalled control and repeatability of tests, which can be simply programmed and run, or chosen from a database of standard ocean conditions.

The state-of-the-art Research Aquarium is integral to the ground-breaking research of the Roslin Institute.

The Aquaculture Genetics Research Facility is a newly-built freshwater aquarium facility and is set up with a hatchery and grow out room.

There are three separate recirculating aquaculture systems to provide suitable water quality conditions for the fish. The Aquaculture Genetics Research Facility has been built to support the ongoing research into disease resistance and genome editing of high economic value fish in particular salmonids.

Located at Kings Buildings, the School of Biological Sciences host a wide range of state-of-the-art research facilities, such as:

• Edinburgh Genome Foundry, which is the only automated facility for the design and assembly of large DNA constructs in the UK.   

• Edinburgh Genomics, offering a wide range of gene sequencing techniques (e.g. Sanger sequencing and whole genome sequencing).  

• Electron Microscope Facilities, including a wide selection of Microscopy techniques (e.g. scanning electron and light microscopy).

The School of GeoSciences hosts a wide range of state-of-the-art laboratories, analytical facilities, and field equipment, including:

• Airborne GeoSciences Facility, which operates a fleet of manned and unmanned aircraft to collect high resolution imagery data of coastal and marine systems.  
• Chemical Analysis Facilities, supporting a wide range of geochemical analyses of soils, sediments, plant material, water samples, and biochar extracts.    
• Experimental GeoScience Facility, hosting a suite of laboratories equipped to support experimental investigations involving the application of extreme temperatures and pressures.