This Utah college is launching the state’s first marine biology program. With no ocean access, here’s how it will work.

The pages of the deep sea book that his grandma gave him when he was 5 years old are now weathered and worn.

Brent Andersen remembers how he would flip through them for hours while his brother was watching cartoons on TV. He’d stare instead at the divers, read about the 10-foot-long sunfish and pull open the foldout page — his favorite — again and again to trace over the painting of rich red coral and a giant squid.

He decided then: He was going to study marine biology. The only thing he wasn’t sure of was how to make that happen growing up in Utah, a deeply landlocked, dry desert state 700 miles away from the nearest coast.

“As many of you know, Utah is not exactly nearby the ocean,” he joked Friday to a room full of people at the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium in Draper.

He held up the book he’s carried with him for decades, though, as evidence that what was once a fantastical dream for him will become a real option for today’s Utah students.

In a landmark partnership for the state, the aquarium that Andersen founded and Utah State University are diving in together to offer a degree in marine biology — the first and only such program available in Utah.

No longer will students have to go to the University of California, Santa Barbara, as Andersen did for his degree. They’ll be able to study and research close to home, with access to the more than 4,000 animals at the aquarium: a 100-mile field trip from Logan to Draper.

“We’re bringing the ocean to Utah in a unique way that will shape a new generation of marine biologists — those born in the mountains and the deserts,” said Trisha Atwood, an associate professor of watershed sciences at USU.

There’s been demand at the Utah school for this kind of offering, said Atwood, who will help lead the program, and it’s the perfect institution for it, with USU’s existing agriculture and animal focus. Currently the school has options for students to study local aquatic restoration and fisheries, such as researching the trout species native to Utah. And it offers the only veterinary degree program in the state.

There’s also a zoology program. But species study has been limited. Now, students and faculty — from across those programs and the new major — will have access to far more in the aquarium’s blue waters, filled with sharks, rays and turtles, as well as the land exhibits that offer access to snakes, birds, river otters and a Komodo dragon.

Though Utah is home to the Great Salt Lake, its saline waters support little aquatic life outside of the now-imperiled brine shrimp.

At the aquarium, veterinarian students will do their clinical rotations. There will be summer research program. Faculty and students will both be able to study the species. Marine biology classes will take place largely at the school’s main campus in Logan; but there will be trips often to the aquarium for hands-on experience and learning, said Linda Nagel, Dean of Natural Resources at USU.

The two organizations will work together, too, on research — sharing knowledge on sustainability and conservation for the world’s largest ecosystem.

“Did you know more than 80% of the ocean remains unexplored?” Nagel asked the audience Friday. “And the number of species in the ocean is unknown. There is so much for us to explore together.”

As they announced the partnership Friday, Nagel and Andersen stood in front of one tank where a curious guitarfish continued to circle back to the glass as they signed an official memorandum of understanding.

One aquarium staffer and a USU professor joined the creature, hopping into the tank in scuba gear, holding hands and signs celebrating the partnership as those in the room cheered. Andersen choked back tears.

The excited screams of children on a school trip walking through the nearby exhibits could also be heard through the wall. Andersen smiled at the sound.

“We don’t know which of those kids is going to be the one called to study the ocean,” he said. “Now there’s a path forward for them.”

This fall semester, USU will pilot the agreement with a minor in marine science. In a year or two — after official approval from USU’s trustees and the state — the major is expected to be available.

That coincides with completed construction of the aquarium’s Sam & Aline Skaggs Science Learning Center, which will have 11 classrooms and four labs where students and faculty can study, learn and research. Faculty, students and staff who attended the announcement Friday donned hard hats and took a tour of the space.

It’ll be the latest addition to the aquarium that has ballooned into 136,000 square feet at this Draper site, where it opened in 2014. Before that, Andersen operated exhibits from an old grocery store building in Sandy. And it actually started with its first iteration in a small shop at the Gateway Mall in downtown Salt Lake City.

His vision was to inspire the community here. And it worked in a convergence he never expected.

Atwood, the USU professor, first visited the smallest, earliest version of the aquarium. She had grown up in rural Wyoming, where, like Andersen, she obsessed over sea creatures and scoured every issue of National Geographic magazine that came in the mail.

But she dropped out of the University of Hawaii, where she had always wanted to study the ocean, after having trouble finding her footing as the first in her family to attend college.

At the little 10,000-foot aquarium space back in Utah, she remembers having a staring contest with a shark.

“I found myself standing in the desert, staring at a shark,” she told the crowd with a laugh. “And it reminded me of my passion, of being a kid again. … And I knew it was time for me to go back to school.”

Atwood went back to Hawaii to finish her marine degree and later completed a Ph.D. in the field. She worked in Australia, researching the impact of sharks on ecosystem resilience in a dream collaboration with National Geographic. Then, she was recruited to USU in 2015 to lay the foundations for the program to come.

When she returned, Loveland Living Planet Aquarium had become one of the largest aquariums in North America.

“Even far from the coastline, the ocean’s reach is limitless,” she said. “Utah State University will be there to provide a pathway for turning that passion into a career.”

Brinley Olsen, a senior at USU, is who the school had in mind when it developed this partnership. She’s majoring in fisheries and aquatics and jumped at the chance to add the marine science minor to her studies. She, like Andersen, fell in love with the ocean at 5 years old.

“I grew up in Utah, so I chose to go to school here,” Olsen said. “I didn’t think there would be opportunity for me to do marine science.”

She traveled to Australia over the summer to study abroad with Atwood and other faculty. And this semester, she’s come to the aquarium to do behavioral analysis research on different fish species.

“It was really cool to be able to learn things in the classroom and then come here and see it,” she said.

Olsen and classmates Avery Truman and McKenzie Petrie on Friday walked through the aquarium where they’ve been studying as the major was announced, marveling at the space that had become their classroom.

Andersen watched as they and others gasped at what they saw: The pictures from the book he’s kept close all these years. When he built this place, he thought: “How can I make this come to life, as it did for me, for all of us?”

Then he walked through the space himself, stopping at the tunnel with fish he used to see only in pictures.