Established on 19 December 2007, the Marine Ecology Research Center consists of two key labs of SOA (Key Laboratory of Science and Engineering for Marine Ecology and Environment, and Key Laboratory of Marine Bioactive Substances), two key labs of Qingdao city (Key Laboratory of Analytical Technology and Standardization of Chinese Medicines, and Marine Natural Products R&D Laboratory).

The Center mainly engages in basic and applied scientific researches and technological development. Specifically, in basic researches, it focuses on marine circulation of nutrients and its ecological effects, marine ecosystem evolution and ecological security, special functional gene of marine organism in extreme environment, and habitat adaptation mechanism; in applied basic researches, it focuses on marine pollution mechanism and environmental effects analysis, pollutant identification and restoration technologies, ecosystem evaluation and integrated management technologies, healthy aquaculture and disease control technologies, and R&D technologies of marine bioactive and new biological materials; in technological development, it gives priority to technologies of sustainable utilization of marine resources and development of online detecting instrument for marine pollutant. 

The Center has 85 research staff members, including one academician of Chinese Academy of Engineering and 40 research fellows, among which 50 have Ph. D degree, and 25 have Master's degree.