@Sea - Tortuga's Natural Treasures

	MISSION RESOURCES RELATED WEB LINKS Biomedical Marine Research Group - Harbor Branch Oceanographic FLORIPEDIA: The Dry Tortugas: The Coral Reefs FLORIPEDIA: Thirty Months at the Dry Tortugas NPS - Dry Tortugas National Park PARKVISION - Dry Tortugas National Park @SEA - Florida's Deep Water Oases - Exploration of a Deef Reef Ecosystem @SEA - Crossing the Florida Straits - A Passage to Deep Sea Discoveries @SEA - Bahamas Journey - A Quest For Drugs From The Sea CRUISE PARTICIPANTS LaTasha Amisial, Graduate Student, Medical University of South Carolina I am a graduate student from the Medical University of South Carolina working towards my PhD in Marine Natural Products Chemistry under the guidance of Dr. Amy E. Wright of Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution. My research project is focused on the discovery of new compounds from deep water marine invertebrates for the potential treatment of pancreatic cancer. This will be my first sampling expedition as such I am extremely excited. My previous chemistry background is in inorganic and analytical chemistry so; I have only worked in traditional laboratory settings until now. This field expedition on the R/V Seward Johnson will be a completely new experience for me. I will be both observing how the collections are done as well as assisting the team were I can with the chemical processing of specimen samples. I also hope to have the opportunity to go down in the submersible and observe first hand the collection of new specimen samples. This promises to be a very exciting trip. Rex "Chip" Baumberger, Master's Student, HBOI Florida born and raised in Ohio, Chip returned to Florida in 1996 after a four year tour of duty in the U.S. Navy as a petty officer onboard USS Detroit AOE-4. He received his Bachelor's of Science in Marine Biology from Florida Atlantic University in 2001. He began his HBOI career as a student in the Semester-by-the-Sea program through FAU, and as a Link Foundation intern in 2002. His internship focused on fish assemblages on Looe Key in the Florida Keys, and provided the preliminary study for his MS. Currently working on Harmful Algae Bloom research with Dr. Brian Lapointe, HBOI, Chip's Master's thesis focuses on the effects of HABs on fish assemblages in SE Florida. He is also an amateur photographer, working both above and below the Ocean's surface. He is serving as ship's photographer and general fish guy about town. He has been able to make his first submersible dive and observed close to 20 species of fishes during the 3.5 hour dive. Jennifer Choate - Postdoctoral Investigator, HBOI Jennifer Choate is a with Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution. She received her doctorate in Microbiology from University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, where she studied methanogens as models for life on Mars. This will be her first cruise, and she will serve as a chemist. Kate Douglas - Undergraduate Student from Rutgers University, HBOI Intern Kate Douglas is an undergraduate from Rutgers University majoring in Biology and Biological Oceanography. As an intern at Harbor Branch, Kate is involved with the "Florida's Deep Water Oases-Exploration of Deep Reef Ecosystems" project and has the opportunity to work alongside researchers from the Biomedical Marine Research Program while onboard R/V Seward Johnson. The internship is an excellent opportunity for her to gain experience in research and field work, which includes a trip in the submersible! Kate would like to focus on research biology and educational outreach in the future. Esther Guzman, Assistant Scientist, Cell Biology, HBOI Dr. Esther Guzman is an Assistant Research Scientist at the Marine Natural Products Drug Discovery Program. Her focus at Harbor Branch is the development of cell based assays to test the use of marine compounds as therapeutic agents against cancer, and to elucidate the mechanism of action of compounds with potential therapeutic effects. At sea, Dr. Guzmün assists with vouchering of samples and the molecular archival of the samples. Kathleen Janda, Senior Research Assistant, HBOI Kathleen Janda is a Research Specialist in the Fermentation Group of the Division Biomedical Marine Research. Kathleen received her B.A. from Canisius College, Buffalo, New York and has a Masters degree from Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne. Kathleen has been with BMR for 21 years participating in over 30 collection expeditions both on HBOI's Research vessels and land-based operations. She has made over 300 collecting dives on these expeditions and is rated to dive to 150 feet. Since joining HBOI she has completed the science diving requirements and is a certified PADI Rescue Diver. When on the expeditions, Kathleen is responsible for the microbiology component of the collections, isolating the microorganisms from the sponges, sediment, and water samples taken in hopes that a microorganism is producing the active component responsible for the activity in the many bioassays. DBMR has a culture collection with over 16,000 microorganisms that have been isolated during the past 20 years. Once back in the HBOI Fermentation Lab, these microbes are fermented, extracted, and tested in the bioassays for biomedical activity. Hilaire Kemami Wangun, Postdoctoral Investigator, HBOI I studied chemistry at the University of Yaounde in Cameroon. After my Masters degree I moved to Germany where I completed my PhD at the Leibniz Institute of Natural Products Research and Infection Biology. My PhD project focused on isolation and structure elucidation of bioactive secondary metabolites from terrestrial microbes. Since April 26th, 2007 I have been a post doctoral investigator in the division of Biomedical marine research in the Drug discovery program at Harbor Branch Oceanographic institution. My present project focuses on the discovery of new marine natural products which can potentially be used in cancer therapy. I am pleased to participate in such an exploration; I am looking forward to a good experience. Alanna Mitchell, journalist Alanna Mitchell spent 17 years as a staff journalist and feature writer for The Globe and Mail (Canada's national newspaper) and The Financial Post (Canada's national business paper) until she left daily journalism in late 2004 to work independently as a science writer. She has won three international awards for her writing on science, one of which was a fellowship at Oxford University. She completed that fellowship in 2002. She is the author of Dancing at the Dead Sea: Tracking the World's Ecological Hotspots, a literary non-fiction book about ecological issues that has been published internationally and has won international acclaim. It was named one of the best non-fiction books in Canada in 2004 by Quill & Quire, the publishing industry's trade publication. It came out in the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the European Union in 2005. Her next book, about the ecological problems of the global ocean, will be published internationally in the fall of 2008. She has spent the past two years traveling the world and chronicling the field research of ocean scientists to gather information for this book. Her journey to the bottom of the ocean with the group on the Seward Johnson is the last of about 13 trips for this book. Mitchell has a degree in English and Latin literature from Trinity College, University of Toronto and a degree in journalism from Ryerson University in Toronto. She lives in Toronto with her husband, two children and some of her three step-children. Tara Pitts, Senior Research Assistant, HBOI Tara Pitts has worked in DBMR for over 15 years. She has participated in many research expeditions with HBOI's ships and submersibles. Tara got her BS in marine biology from Florida Tech in Melbourne, Florida. She also has received an AS in Medical Laboratory Technology from Indian River Community College. Tara started working with DBMR in the microbiology group and now works in the biological screening group. She tests our sample extracts for any type of biological activity. The majority of our testing these days is on cancer cells. Tara also works on mechanism of action studies of the active pure compounds that are isolated through biologically guided purification. On this expedition Tara will be focusing on helping the microbiology group with their isolations as well as helping in the daily processing of the collected samples. Shirley Pomponi, President and CEO, HBOI Shirley Pomponi is President and CEO of Harbor Branch Oceanographic. She received her Ph.D. in Biological Oceanography from the University of Miami, RSMAS. She has spent 18 of her 23 years at Harbor Branch working in the Biomedical Marine Research group. Shirley's research interests are spongesÒtheir biology, taxonomy, ecology, chemistry, molecular biology, and cell culture. She's particularly interested in developing in vitro (i.e., cell culture) techniques for production of sponge-derived bioactive molecules. She says that the best part of her job is diving in the submersibleÒand she's made more than 250 submersible dives since she's been at Harbor Branch. In her current job, she hardly ever gets the chance to do fieldwork, so it's a real treat for her to be participating in this expedition. On this trip, Shirley is marine biologist, submariner, and taxonomist. She'll be making dives in the Johnson-Sea-Link almost every day, and identifying the sponges that she, Amy, and John collect. John K. Reed - Senior Research Scientist, HBOI John Reed is Senior Research Scientist at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution (HBOI) and is Principal Investigator for the Robertson Coral Reef Research and Conservation Program. Emphasis is on research and conservation of deep and shallow water coral reefs, including deep water Lophelia and Oculina reefs, and shallow water reefs of the Caribbean, Bahamas and Florida. He has been Chief Scientist and co-Principal Investigator on numerous deep coral expeditions off the coast of Florida. As Chief Scientist he has been in charge of organizing over 60 worldwide research expeditions over the past 30 years. John also heads the Collections and Taxonomy Department for the Biomedical Research Program. He is curator for HBOI's museum of biomedical collections (>30,000 deep and shallow water marine organisms) and is manager of the submersible videotape and photographic archives. John is Diving Safety Officer for all diving activities of 60 HBOI research and commercial divers. He has logged 35 deep water lockout dives with helium-oxygen from Johnson-Sea-Link submersibles, more than 2000 scientific scuba dives, and more than 200 dives in the Johnson-Sea-Link and Clelia submersibles. John's research on the deep water Oculina coral reefs off Florida since 1976 has resulted in over 45 publications and the establishment of a 300 square mile Marine Protected Area. His current research on the deep water Lophelia reefs also may be instrumental in their protection in the near future. John received his B.S. from the University of Miami and M.S. specializing in marine ecology from Florida Atlantic University in 1975. Jill Roberts, Research Assistant, HBOI Jill Roberts is a chemistry research assistant in the Marine Natural Products Drug Discovery Program. She began as an intern in 2001, and is now a full time employee. In the lab she isolates and identifies chemical compounds from deep sea organisms. On the Drug Discovery Sampling Cruise she assists in preserving voucher specimens and extracts and prepares collected samples for compound detection via High Performance Liquid Chromatography (HPLC). Brad E. Rosenheim, Postdoctoral Investigator, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution I am very pleased to be a part of this research cruise along the east Florida shelf and the Straits of Florida. The seldom-explored intermediate depths of our oceans hold many secrets of interest to both marine geologists and biologists, among other experts. Whereas most submersible explorations focus on the deepest depths, researchers at HBOI have developed technology to focus on depths between well-studied ocean surface and the often explored abyss. It is my hope that our exploration will lead to a treasure trove of corals and sponges which have recorded information about our oceans' past. My research involves the use of accretionary skeletons like those deposited by certain corals and sponges to interpret the conditions under which they formed. This is done geochemically. Using a combination of chemical theory and environmental calibration, past research has established relationships between the chemical signatures in these skeletons and the ambient environment around the organism as it lived. In organisms that preserve older portions of skeleton while building new skeleton, this type of knowledge becomes very important. Whereas modern day oceanographers can sail the world (well, most of it) and directly measure temperature, salinity, and currents of the ocean, "paleoceanographers" are left with only proxies of these parameters to elongate our short instrumental record. My work has involved calibrating species of sclerosponges that live deeper than most massive corals for paleoclimate reconstruction and comparing those records to both shallow and deep sea corals. This gives us a better idea of where heat, which is acquired and given off by the ocean at the surface, is transported on the subsurface. Thus I am very interested in the opportunity to participate in this cruise searching for these climate-recording organisms far below the surface on Florida's shelf and slope. Of course, to interpret past ocean conditions, we need to know something about chronology. My current research uses a combination of radiocarbon and uranium series dating to ascertain the age of a skeleton and how long ago its ambient water mass was located at the surface of the ocean. Performing this exercise at different locations gives us an idea of how past circulation patterns from the surface to the subsurface have compared to those that modern-day oceanographers measure. This research is of interest to many as the debate about the effects of global climate change becomes a larger part of the public conscience. My research will undoubtedly benefit from interactions with scientists of the diverse backgrounds found on this cruise and hopefully my findings will be of benefit or interest to them. Priscilla Winder, Graduate Student, HBOI Priscilla Winder is a graduate student in the Florida Atlantic University/Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution joint Ph.D. program. Her research interests focus on the isolation of natural products from deep-sea marine organisms that inhibit the growth of cancer cells and determining their mechanism of action. Priscilla has been working with the Marine Natural Products Drug Discovery Group since 2002 and has participated in nine research cruises. She obtained her BS in Marine Biology and BA in Chemistry from Florida Atlantic University in 2002. During the South to Tortugas cruise, she will be photographically documenting all the organisms brought on board the R/V Seward Johnson and assisting with the making and screening of chemical extracts. Amy Wright, Senior Scientist, HBOI Dr. Amy Wright is a Senior Scientist at Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institution and the Head of the Natural Products Chemistry group. She earned her doctorate in Organic Chemistry from the University of California, Riverside Campus studying natural products made by seaweeds and plant pathogenic bacteria. She has participated in natural products drug discovery research for the past 23 years conducting over 150 dives in the Johnson-Sea-Link submersibles. Her research focuses on the investigation of deep water organisms which might hold the clue to understanding and treating diseases such as cancer, infectious disease, inflammation and Alzheimer's disease. On the current mission, Dr. Wright is Co-Chief Scientist and will help coordinate the overall mission. She will also participate in submersible dives, collecting novel organisms for study.