The Institute of Marine Sciences (IMS) was established in 1975 with the dual objectives of conducting oceanographic research and providing graduate level education in marine sciences. The Institute is a part of the Middle East Technical University, which has become a major centre of education in the region since its establishment in 1956.
The Institute has five main divisions:
Oceanography,
Marine Biology and Fisheries,
Marine Geology and Geophysics.
The Institute offers graduate level education leading to M.S. and Ph.D. degrees with options in the disciplines mentioned above. The research carried out by the IMS encompasses a wide range of topics including field investigations and numerical modeling of physical chemical and biological dynamics of the ocean, coastal ocean hydrodynamics, air-sea interactions, water mass formation and exchange between basins, dynamics of straits and their exchanges, air-sea interactions, regional atmospheric circulation modeling, long range transport of atmospheric elements, application of remote sensing to oceanography. The Institute has strived, since its beginning, to obtain oceanographic equipment incorporating the latest technological developments. Both the sea-going equipment and laboratory instrumentation have been continuously updated to help maintain a level of research comparable with leading oceanographic institutions.
The Institute's campus at Erdemli houses laboratories for chemical, biological and geological analyses and data processing. A computing unit, a satellite data acquisition and processing unit and a library are also part of the main research facilities. The capabilities of the Satellite Image Acquisition and Processing Unit of the Institute improved significantly through acquisition of real-time HRPT/AVHRR pictures from NOAA TIROS-N series satellites (NOAA 9-10-12 and 14) since January 1994. The system is capable of receiving data from an area extending from the Arabian to the Baltic Sea and the Atlantic Ocean to the east of the Caspian Sea on a daily basis. The Institute is also one of the authorized center to receive SeaWiFS data of the SEASTAR satellite. The Institute has participated / will participate in the following ongoing and regional/European programs: NATO projects (TU-Fisheries, TU-BlackSea, TU-DBMS, linkage grants in cooperation with Black Sea riparian countries), EC projects (MAMA, ARENA, ADIOS), IAEA, NSF International Projects.