The main campus of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science is located in Gloucester Point, Virginia, at the mouth of the York River, a major tributary and passageway to  Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. VIMS  lies approximately 13 miles southeast of the William and Mary campus in Williamsburg. Campus coordinates are 37.25° N, 76.50° W.

In addition to our 40-acre main campus in Gloucester Point, VIMS has two satellite campuses. The Eastern Shore Laboratory (ESL), in the seaside village of Wachapreague, serves as a field station for research, teaching, and advisory activities, with easy access to the barrier islands, salt marshes, and lagoons of Virginia’s Atlantic shore. The geographic coordinates of the ESL are 37.61° N, 75.69° W.

The Kauffman Aquaculture Center (KAC), on the Rappahannock River, provides  state-of-the-art quarantine facilities for work with non-native shellfish. Current use of the facility  focuses on studies of the native oyster Crassostrea virginica and the non-native oyster C. ariakensis.

The VIMS campus in Gloucester Point was a strategic site in the American Revolution and Civil War. Views include the Coleman Bridge, the world's largest double swing-span overpass. Yorktown, site of the decisive battle of the Revolutionary war, lies just across the York River. Battleships and the occasional submarine regularly sail past on their way to the US Naval Weapons Station, which lies just upstream of Gloucester Point on the western shore of the York River.