When the University of South Florida’s world-renowned Marine Science Lab went up in flames on Saturday, students and faculty struggled to calculate what felt like an unfathomable loss. There will now be a scramble to find office and lab space for professors and students. Plus, the question of how summer research and doctoral degrees will stay on track. But the biggest uncertainty is whether the university’s research freezers are safe, not just from the fire, but from the heavy smoke and water damage. The freezers function like museums of the past. Since they hold samples gathered from around the world, if those samples are lost, that door to history vanishes. “It’s the work of many people and many generations of students and researchers,” said oceanography professor Frank Muller-Karger. Read more at the link in our bio. ✍️ : Bethany Barnes, Lucy Marques, Michaela Mulligan & Alexa Coultoff, 📹 : lsantanaphoto / Tampa Bay Times