A research vessel will launch a small sub to scan the gulf bottom in hopes of finding a medical miracle.
By CRAIG PITTMAN
Published September 9, 2003
[Times photos: Cherie Diez]
The federal research vessel Ronald H. Brown ships out from the Port of St. Petersburg this week with a team of "bioprospectors" on board.
A close-up of the Discodermia sponge.
ST. PETERSBURG - Somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico may be the next big medical breakthrough.
A sponge growing deep on the ocean bottom could produce a substance that combats cancer. A mollusk might fight heart disease. A coral could ward off infections.
But first somebody has to find them.
This week a federal research vessel, the Ronald H. Brown, ships out from the Port of St. Petersburg, carrying scientists who already have made one such discovery and are hoping for more.
They will traverse 500 miles in 12 days, using a remote-controlled sub to explore the bottom for up to 12 hours a day.
They will search the pinnacles of Lophelia coral that jut 500 feet up from the sea floor and sinkholes that pockmark the hard bottom. They will explore along an ancient limestone ledge parallel to Florida's west coast, which marked the edge of the shore 15,000 years ago.
They will even check some of the 4,000 offshore oil platforms sprouting from the gulf to find out what sort of sea life has attached itself to the legs of the derricks and whether any of it could produce a pharmacological bonanza.
"We don't know what's growing out there," said Shirley Pomponi, director of research for Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution in Fort Pierce, which is spearheading the voyage with funding from the National Institutes of Health and National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration.
The NOAA-owned ship offers five laboratories on board. As the remote-controlled sub brings up samples of sponges, sea fans, sea urchins and tube worms, scientists will extract chemicals from each one and examine whether they can kill bacteria and fungi. A portion of each one will be frozen for further examination when the ship returns to port.
Also on board the 247-foot ship: 500 plastic foam cups, the contribution of a bunch of high school students in Melbourne.
Their science teacher, Gary Wolfe of Eau Gallie High, is part of the ship's scientific crew for this trip. He let his 11th- and 12th-grade students decorate each cup. He will place them in a bag attached to the outside of the sub. When it dives to the ocean bottom, the pressure should shrink the cups until they are as tiny as thimbles.
Wolfe will also help file daily Internet reports on the trip, which one NOAA official estimated will cost $40,000 a day.
This marks the first time anyone has undertaken such a voyage of discovery in the gulf, according to Harbor Branch scientists.
In the past they have searched the Atlantic and Caribbean, even ranging as far as Australia.
They discovered that one Caribbean sponge, Discodermia, produced a chemical that they have licensed to a pharmaceutical company, which last year began human clinical trials for treatment of solid tumors. Another sponge has yielded a chemical that can be used as an anti-inflammatory agent.
That undersea creatures can produce such chemicals should come as no surprise, said Amy Wright, director of Harbor Branch's biomedical marine research division.
Aspirin originally came from willow bark, she pointed out. Three-fourths of the top 20 drugs used by hospitals come from natural sources.
Similarly, sponges, mollusks and other marine species produce natural chemicals that ward off predators, aid in fertilization and stimulate growth, she said.
Those chemicals could have properties that help heal human ills too, she said.
One of the enduring mysteries, though, is how these chemicals benefit the sea creatures, Wright said. For instance, at this point no one knows what Discodermia uses its cancer-fighting chemical for.
"It's harder to get funding for that kind of basic science," she said.
For more information
The scientists and crew aboard the Ronald H. Brown will be filing daily Web log reports on their voyage across the Gulf of Mexico. To follow their trip, log onto http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov and click on "Explorations" and then "Bioprospecting."
