The $12.5 million Gulf of Maine Research Institute on Commercial Street in Portl

The $12.5 million Gulf of Maine Research Institute on Commercial Street in Portland will be fully operational by January 2006. Benjamin Slayton, donor and community relations manager, emphasizes that the educational element of the institute does not include an aquarium. The first educational focus connected with ongoing research will be on the Atlantic Herring. Mainers Jim Maxner and Mary Cerullo have had a 30-year dream of creating an aquarium and think the institute dropped the ball by shifting the focus from an aquarium to a research center, but it is possible that in the years to come the center might still build an aquarium