Activities of the Ocean Research Institute, University of Tokyo and Its Future Development

Summary

The Ocean Research Institute (ORI), University of Tokyo, was founded in 1962 for the promotion of basic and comprehensive research on marine sciences and currently has 16 research divisions in the Nakano campus, Tokyo and a shore laboratory, the Otsuchi Marine Research Center, Iwate Prefecture, covering physical and chemical oceanography, meteorology, geology, geophysics, marine biology, and fisheries sciences. The Institute operates two research vessels, the Tansei-Maru in the seas adjacent to the Japanese Islands and the Hakuho-Maru in the world oceans. These facilities are open to the use of marine scientists throughout Japan.

More than 1,000 researchers in total, including scientists and students from abroad, are involved each year in various aspects of the research efforts of the Institute. The Institute has participated in many international cooperative research projects as a national representative organization. The ORI is also engaged in the academic program of the graduate school of the University of Tokyo. As of 1991, 30 out of the 80 graduate students of the Institute come from Asia, Europe, and the United States.

The ORI is developing towards being a core institution for oceanic research and education in the world as well in Japan. Establishment of an international center for ocean sciences is one of the important future plans of the ORI to advance further international cooperative research now being carried out with many countries, especially those in the Western Pacific region.

Recently research activities of the ORI are developing toward a new direction, in addition to individual traditional research fields. Activities include a study of physical and biogeochemical processes resulting in circulation of energy and material in the ocean as part of the interacting components composing the planet Earth.