SF State's Estuary & Ocean Science Center in Tiburon will close after fight to save it falls short

San Francisco State will close its Romberg Tiburon Campus on Sept. 30, ending a four-year fight to save the only marine research center on San Francisco Bay's shores.

With fall approaching, it’s almost time for Discovery Day, a day of hands-on marine science for Bay Area children at the Estuary & Ocean Science Center. But not this year. This year, the halls will be dark, the seawater tanks will be empty, the scientists gone and the gates to the Romberg Tiburon Campus padlocked indefinitely.

Despite desperate attempts to save it, San Francisco State University’s marine-biology field station will close Sept. 30, according to interim Executive Director Katharyn Boyer and university administrators.

Boyer’s announcement ends a four-year struggle to save the 53-acre facility in unincorporated Tiburon after the university said it could no longer afford to maintain it “with continued declines in enrollment, and a budget that won’t balance,” she wrote in an Aug. 11 letter.

“At the same time, deferred maintenance, inherited in 1978 at the time of the property’s transfer, has become much worse over time,” she wrote. “We have known for years that the … campus would need to become self-supporting; however, maintenance and operation funds have been very difficult to find.”

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