Reference
Submitted by the Federal Agency for Scientific Organisations (FANO) in fulfilment of a Government directive.
This directive affirms the decision to establish the federal state-funded scientific institutions – the Alexander Kovalevsky Marine Biology Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and the Marine Hydrophysical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The two institutes will be set up on the basis of the existing state-funded scientific organisations located in the city of Sevastopol – the Kovalevsky Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas, and the Marine Hydrophysical Institute.
The Institute of Biology of the Southern Seas was established by the Presidium of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR) in 1963 under the General Biology Department and comprised the Sevastopol, Odessa and Karadag biological stations with the central building in Sevastopol. The Sevastopol Biological Station was set up in Russia in 1891 and handed over to the Academy of Sciences in 1891.
The Marine Hydrophysical Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences was established in Moscow in 1948 and comprised the Black Sea Hydrophysical Station of the USSR Academy of Sciences and the Marine Hydrophysical Laboratory. The institute was handed over to the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR in August 1961 and moved to Sevastopol in 1963.
The two institutes conduct research on biological diversity, functional dynamics, and spatial and temporal variability of marine ecosystems, as well as oceanography studies and research in marine hydrophysics, hydrochemistry, geophysics, and biology.