BAHAMAS JOURNEY A Quest For Drugs From The Sea MISSION DISPATCH 6 • October 20, 2003 Dispatch by Mark Carroll - @Sea Photo-Journalist End of Line Although the expedition is rapidly drawing to a close, our speed through the islands and the fervor of the scientists aboard have not diminished. Sizable Eleuthera Island came and went yesterday in a blur of scuba and sub dive ops. After an all-night steam through roller coaster seas, dawn this morning revealed the coast of Egg Island framed against soft clouds and considerably calmer waters. This, and nearby Royal Island, will be our final locations before several of the crew disembark in Freeport while others work their way back with the ship to its home port at Harbor Branch in Fort Pierce, Florida. It is there that the investigative processes begun at sea will continue in the comfort (read: stillness) of land-based labs. Time will tell if the reefs and surrounding deep sea of the Bahamas hold the next exciting drug. In its raw form, it could very well be aboard right now. There have already been some encouraging initial results coming out of the labs. Some of the collected samples have shown "chemically interesting" compounds. But, this is just a small piece of a much larger puzzle. The work is by no means complete. The whole process is like a good mystery. Small clues revealed along the way only further the intricacies of the who-done-it, or more accurately, what-compound-do-it. The scientists still need to isolate, refine, and test these promising substances via a calculating course of trials and reasoning that could take years. The measure of an expedition's success is often in the effort itself. And, regardless of future results, that is certainly true here. Of all of the reasons to enter the underwater realm, few are nobler than to discover. ADDITIONAL DISPATCH IMAGES [ IMAGE 01 ] [ IMAGE 02 ] [ IMAGE 03 ] [ IMAGE 04 ]

© 2005, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution