It is a cold January morning and inside the Massachusetts State Lobster Hatchery on Lagoon Pond in Oak Bluffs, all is quiet. It has been 14 years since lobsters swam in bubbling tanks and thousands of summer visitors were treated to tours of this place overlooking the Lagoon.

The upstairs office space is occupied by two scientists; they work at desks covered with paperwork and are surrounded by shelves stacked with reports and scientific papers. A phone rings and the sound travels through the otherwise empty building. Microscopes and laboratory equipment lie all around, idle now. A labyrinth of plastic pipes that once carried gurgling fresh seawater into the building is still and empty. In an adjoining shed, large water pumps that were once the heart of the working hatchery are frozen from lack of use.

When the hatchery was operating, which it did for 40 years, half a million baby lobsters were raised from eggs, fed, nurtured, studied and released every year.

A large sign high on the wall with black lettering against a white background tells the story of the life of a lobster in the hatchery. “These tanks contain female lobsters bearing eggs in clusters of some thousands held externally on the underside of the abdomen . . .” the sign says. On another wall, a complete shell of a large lobster is mounted in a glass case.

Other signs direct visitors (sometimes 10,000 people a summer, many of them on tour busses, used to visit the hatchery): “Keep hands out of water.”

The lobby is now stacked with empty rectangular saltwater tanks. One holds a collection of boating gear, another Coleman ice chests. A new heating system for the building sits in a cardboard box, awaiting installation.

A small window provides the only light on this January morning. The concrete floor is cold underfoot. A large hand-cranked shutoff valve stands rigid and rusting in the corner.

In a laboratory room, stacks of beakers are covered with a thin layer of white dust. The smell inside is reminiscent of an old summer cottage that has been unoccupied all winter.

An outbuilding that was once a greenhouse is blocked by debris and covered in overgrown vegetation. A bitter cold wind blows off the pond, rattling the leafless jungle. A 14,000-gallon saltwater tank stands high atop the landscape, its ladder entwined with vines.

Opposite the tank an osprey nest festoons an abandoned utility pole.

Across the parking lot, a hurricane fence surrounds a shiny electric generator. Behind the power plant lie piles of broken plastic pipe and discarded fiberglass tanks.

Just a few feet away, a small cemetery sits on a patch of open land. A bench in the cemetery marks it as a place on the African-American Heritage Trail. The name on the bronze plaque is Rebecca Michael, who lived from 1809 to 1854.

And while the words on the plaque refer to Rebecca Michael, they also appear to speak for the 60-year-old lobster hatchery, once the New England and world center for lobster research, now a forgotten place long shuttered and out of use due to lack of funding. The plaque reads: “Nobody knows the trouble I’ve seen.”