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FLORIDA FRONTIERS Exploring Unknown Deep-Sea Biomedical Resources MISSION DISPATCH 4 • May 23, 2004 Dispatch by Brian Cousin - @Sea Photo-Journalist Having reached the northerly limit of this Center of Excellence cruise on Saturday, about 90 miles off the coast of Jacksonville, Florida, the team has turned back south. Two Johnson-Sea-Link I (JSLI) dives were conducted Saturday before transiting overnight to arrive at our station Sunday, about 50 miles off Cape Canaveral. Two more dives were conducted off the cape to sites determined by Senior Scientist 
John Reed
- suspected deep-water coral reefs. All the sub dives so far have returned promising collections. Sample buckets are filled with
a variety of sponges colored red, yellow and white, some delicately structured, others thick and firm.
Harbor Branch's Dr. Shirley Pomponi occupied the principle investigator's seat in the sphere for Sunday afternoon's dive which surfaced after a spectacular ocean sunset. Dr. Amy Wright, Director of the Division of Biomedical Marine Research at Harbor Branch assumed the role of P.I. earlier in the day, with Dr. Thomas Brueck taking the observers position in the back compartment of the sub. Amy is glad to be exploring off the coast of Florida. "What if we found something right here, after diving so many other places." The possibility seems a good one in view of the samples she returned with from the depths. "We've found an interesting Neptheid soft coral with lots of promising compounds, and some Anthomastus. There's also a lot of hexactinellids (sponges) that are interesting but have a little less chemistry." Using HPLC (High Performance Liquid Chromatography) on board the ship, the team 
can quickly analyze new extracts for chemical diversity.
When a favorable response is indicated, the species from which the extract was derived can be targeted for recollection, ensuring there is enough
of the sample for in-depth analysis in Harbor Branch labs.
Dr. Wright was also pleasantly surprised to find a large thicket of bamboo coral (Isididae) on the mission's first dive off Fort Pierce. Harbor Branch researchers originally started investigating bamboo coral after collecting some of it during the NOAA Ocean Exploration cruise in 2002. It is currently being evaluated in the biomedical research labs on the Harbor Branch campus. Missing from the wish list so far is Spongosorites, a species found in abundance on deep-water reefs during the Ocean Exploration cruise between Charleston, South Carolina and off the coast of south Georgia, but remarkably not off Florida. They appear in abundance again in the Bahamas, so it's not as though we've reached the southern limit of its range. Spongosorites renders up the topsentin family of compounds, which possess significant anti-inflammatory properties. Dr. Wright will keep searching. "After all, we've looked at about 8 of the 150 or so reefs John Reed has identified, so there's still lots to go." And as we transect over the study area using the Seward Johnson 's echo sounder, John identifies more possible targets each day. 
It's now Monday morning and we are diving about 30 miles off the coast of Stuart, Florida as we continue our cruise track south. During the overnight
transit the ship ran a fathometer transect over the bottom, creating a nice profile of bumps and mounds that finally taper off into a flat profile punctuated
now and again with small pinnacles that we suspect are deep water coral reefs. Dr. Amy Wight is in the sub with pilot Phil Santos, making collections for
biomedical research, and helping to characterize a small part of the ocean floor that has never been explored before, barely 40 miles down the coast
from our home port in Fort Pierce.
ADDITIONAL DISPATCH IMAGES [ IMAGE 01 ] [ IMAGE 02 ] [ IMAGE 03 ] Center of Excellence in Biomedical and Marine Biotechnology The Center of Excellence was created with $10 million in state funding in 2003. It is based at FAU and combines the expertise of Harbor Branch, Florida International University, Nova Southeastern University, the Smithsonian Marine Station at Ft. Pierce, and several private companies. The overall goal for the Center of Excellence is to promote the discovery, development, and commercialization in Florida of new medicines and other products. Center funding is intended as seed money to further expand Florida's emerging marine biotechnology industry over the next two years with the goal of attracting longer-term funding from federal and commercial sources. Besides funding one expedition per year, Center of Excellence money is being used to:
2) design and build a high-definition camera system that can be carried on an AUV to map new seafloor sites 3) to purchase equipment that will greatly enhance member institutions' ability to rapidly and accurately analyze the pharmaceutical potential of new chemical compounds.  |  |
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