College of the Atlantic's campus is adjacent to Acadia National Park on the eastern shore of Mount Desert Island (MDI) and has 1,700 feet of shorefront and a pier for our research vessels.

The Alice Eno Field Station (www.greatduckisland.net) located on Great Duck Island, is located six miles south of MDI. Great Duck Island is home to one of the largest colonies of Leach's Storm Petrels and Black Guillemots in the continental U.S. Each summer, students under the supervision of faculty member John Anderson research the habitat selection and reproductive biology of the island's seabirds. An ongoing collaboration with Intel's Berkeley Research Lab allows the research team to examine microenvironmental conditions in and around storm-petrel burrows.

Allied Whale (www.coa.edu/alliedwhale) is COA's marine mammal research and rescue center. Established in 1972, Allied Whale developed techniques for photo identification studies of whales that scientists now use worldwide. Allied Whale curates the North Atlantic Humpback, Finback, and Antarctic Humpback Whale Catalogs, containing the world's largest collection of photographs and data on these species. Students work in photo-identification, respond to marine rescues, and present educational programs to school groups.
 
The Edward McC. Blair Marine Research Station is twenty-five miles south of MDI on Mount Desert Rock and is base for much of the college's marine mammal research. As a seamount in the Gulf of Maine, it is ideally suited for studies of whales and seals, because it creates an area of upwelling, bringing nutrients to the surface.

The 42-foot R/V Indigo is COA's primary research vessel. It serves as a research platform, as well as transporting researchers and students to the island field stations and on extended courses and field trips into the Gulf of Maine.

The 26-foot R/V Borealis is Allied Whale's research vessel for responding to marine mammal strandings. Allied Whale also has a fleet of hard-hulled Zodiacs, including R/V Meg and R/V Sali.

On campus, COA has a fully equipped Geographic Information System lab with state-of-the-art workstations, digitizing tables, and plotters.

Cooperative agreements with The Nature Conservancy, National Park Service, and the State of Maine allow access to numerous additional field sites. Nearby Jackson Laboratory and Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory provide fully equipped lab space for research in molecular biology and environmental physiology.