US Harbour Branch drug discovery group has recently completed a two-week expedition to explore the Straits of Florida in search of organisms that could potentially be employed to cure diseases such as cancer and Alzheimer’s. The work included the first submersible exploration of the remote Cay Sal Bank, which encompasses a number of small, uninhabited islands 30 miles north of Cuba.

Prior to the expedition Amy Wright, head of the Harbour Branch Biomedical Marine Research group said that: “We don’t really know what organisms to expect. Given the difference in the habitat, we expect to find some new species that we haven’t collected before. That’s why we’re going.”

Cay Sal is a 60-mile wide sand bank fringed with a few small islands and surrounded on all sides by the deep Straits of Florida and the swiftly flowing Florida current, which joins with the Antilles current to form the Gulf Stream off central Florida. Almost no information is available about the area’s deepwater habitats. Ultimately, Harbour Branch’s drug discovery group hopes to add to its growing collection of compounds derived from marine organisms that continue to show promise in fighting various forms of cancer and other diseases, it said.

Besides the Cay Sal Bank, the expedition also included several days of submersible exploration on the Miami Terrace, which is a 60-mile long, ancient deep-water reef just east of Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

In dives on the Miami Terrace during 2004, the team, along with scientists from Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, found incredible diversity that varied dramatically along its length, said Harbour Branch. The latest dives covered new areas not yet explored, and besides looking for unusual species, a key goal was to gather samples of a sponge collected during last year’s trip that produces chemicals currently showing potential in fighting pancreatic cancer.

The expedition was supported through funds appropriated by the Florida legislature and approved by Governor Jeb Bush as part of the state’s response to the US Commission on Ocean Policy’s (USCOP) 2004 report. The report is the first comprehensive review of America’s management of ocean resources in over 30 years. It calls for sweeping changes in ocean policy including dramatic increases in ocean science funding and restructuring of government agencies that manage ocean resources.

[SOURCE THE MARINE SCIENTIST]

Classification Society Bureau Veritas is focusing its efforts on the problems associated with contamination of food, by extending its Health on Board management programme to include food processing.

‘Public health has always been a major cause of concern for the shipping industry in general, and for the cruise industry in particular,’ stated Product Manager, Passenger Ships, Jean-Jacques Juenet.

‘In recent years there have been a number of reported outbreaks of infectious disease on board ocean going vessels. And both cargo and passenger vessels have had to contend with the serious operational and financial consequences of such outbreaks.

Food is the most common source of contamination. But there are a lot of other potential sources, such as water systems [particularly sanitary hot water types] and air conditioning plant.’

BV’s Health On Board scheme provides assistance for owners and operators through a range of issues, including design, maintenance and monitoring of air and water systems. The extension of its remit to include food is considered a natural progression.

Through initial and periodic audits, action plans will be put in place to ensure that owners and operators achieve, within a specified period, the necessary conformity with well-established hygiene standards. The Programme will also allow owners and operators to anticipate potential risks relating to the operation of the vessel.

The overall objective of the programme is to help vessels achieve conformity with US Public Health Service standards as set out in the Vessel Sanitation Programme Operations manual edited by the US Centre for Disease Control & Prevention.

According to Juenet, any company engaged in tourismrelated trades ‘need to be keenly aware of the potentially damaging consequences of such incidents [of contamination], and of the impact they can have on their reputation, their image and their profitability. Technology is available to help assess and reduce risk, but it is important that the right investment is made in the right product and the right management system,’ he concludes.

If initial audit results are favourable, or when non-conformities have been corrected, certification confirming conformity with BV’s programme is granted. Subject to annual audit verification, this certification can be used by the owner or operator to demonstrate that a strong culture of risk control and limitation has been implemented with regard to contamination, and that it has been efficiently enforced.

A new study led by University of Washington researchers, has found that key section of the west Antarctic ice sheet probably never contained as much ice as scientists originally thought it did. This was achieved by using a 1,000m ice core and the findings mean it couldn’t have contributed as much to the higher sea level, said the scientists.

In an area called Siple Dome, the ice sheet currently rises 1,000m above a bedrock plateau. Some computer reconstructions indicate it was perhaps twice as thick at the end of the last ice age, also called the Last Glacial Maximum. But evidence from an ice core extracted near Siple Dome from 1997-99, along with other calculations, indicates ice in that area has lost only 200m to 400m of its thickness in the last 20,000 years, said Edwin Waddington, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences.

Studying the ice core layer by layer, each representing one year’s worth of snowfall compacted into a very thin band, researchers were able to extract an isotope record that provided a picture of temperature and snowfall patterns near Siple Dome. The layers get thinner and thinner with depth, as more ice and snow piles up. But the thinness of the layers deposited near the end of the Last Glacial Maximum indicate the ice also was being thinned by ice streams that were flowing even then, probably starting in about the same places they do now.

One major implication of the research, Dr Waddington said, is that it disputes the theory that west Antarctic ice streams retreated when the ice shelf did. In the last ice age, the ice streams near Siple Dome had to be roughly where they are now to keep the dome from building up more ice.

By giving a clearer picture of the site where snow was deposited and eventually turned to glacial ice, the work gives scientists new information for interpreting climate in the last ice age and beyond, which is key to understanding how climate is changing today, he added.

[SOURCE THE MARINE SCIENTIST]

The presence of the chemical contaminant styrene in bunker fuel is endemic within the industry and is threatening both vessel operations and the health of crew onboard according to a leading fuel testing agency.

Lintec Testing Services says the problem is most acute in Antwerp and Rotterdam, although styrene in fuels has been detected in Gibraltar, Houston and Singapore.

‘One of our clients had to debunker several thousand tonnes of fuel because we discovered high levels of styrene during routine screening,’ says Lintec managing director John Dixon. ‘Over the last three months we have seen a number of fuel stems with high styrene content, some in the 2000 to 4000ppm range. Results from our chemical screening database indicate that approximately 40% of samples tested contained some trace of styrene with over 20% having more than 100ppm styrene concentration. There is no acceptable limit, but we consider that action needs to be taken to control this type of contamination.’

Styrene monomer is frequently present in trace amounts in fuel due to problems encountered at refineries and chemical plants. However, a recent fuel stem in Rotterdam contained styrene contamination at a concentration of 4000ppm, many times the level which Lintec considers to be acceptable.

‘Waste chemical contamination in bunkers raises three problems,’ Dixon told MER. ‘Firstly, you are paying for fuel but getting waste material, and in this debunkering case our client got many tonnes of waste when he paid for fuel. Secondly, there is the health and safety issue. No shipowner knowingly puts their crews at risk from inhaling chemical vapours. Finally, there is the issue we usually hear about which is whether or not the fuel will damage the engine. Well, we don't think styrene monomer does that but under some circumstances it can polymerise and cause fuel filter clogging. But there is a big problem with health and safety and this contamination needs to be controlled. Styrene should not be present in bunker fuels because it poses a significant health risk.’

[SOURCE MER]