HARBOR BRANCH - OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE

Common Sea Squirts Could Help Clean Up Lagoon

FT. PIERCE -- Sea squirts are ubiquitous in marine environments and well known as nuisance globs that grow on ropes, pilings, and everything else humans put in saltwater. But Harbor Branch scientists, working in collaboration with Florida Atlantic University (FAU), are hoping that people may instead think of sea squirts as water saviors. These filter feeders may help reduce the impacts of such Indian River Lagoon plagues as the neon-green alga that overcame parts of the estuary last year in conjunction with high discharges of nutrient-rich waters from Lake Okeechobee. This Wednesday, for the next event in the 2006 Ocean Science Lecture Series, Harbor Branch aquaculture expert Dr. John Scarpa will for the first time publicly discuss work to explore the bioremediation potential of sea squirts.

"It may be a pie-in-the-sky idea," said Scarpa, "but that's what research is for and in our preliminary work we've definitely shown that the potential is there."

Sea squirts naturally filter water, indiscriminately removing as food a wide range of particles present. Theoretically, that means the organisms could, if placed in an area in large enough quantities, remove species responsible for harmful algal blooms, or troublesome bacterial species that might be contaminating a waterway. To avoid unwanted proliferation of the species, the idea would be to place the sea squirts in a waterway in a contained fashion that would allow them to be moved to another area once filtering goals had been accomplished. The sea squirts would likely have to be one component in an overall plan to clean up water in a particular area.

Lisa Draughon, an FAU graduate student, began preliminary work with Scarpa last summer to explore the sea squirt bioremediation concept. She found that sea squirts native to the Indian River Lagoon do in fact filter substantial volumes of water--100 of the small organisms can filter about 2,000 gallons of water per day--and that their filtering process will remove the common bacteria E. coli. Draughon will be pursuing the sea squirt research as her doctoral dissertation and she, Dr. James Hartmann of FAU, and Scarpa, are currently seeking funding to pursue sea squirt research targeted at the Indian River Lagoon.

Besides the bioremediation project, Scarpa will also discuss benefits sea squirts already offer, namely producing chemical compounds that have shown promise as cancer treatments. One of these compounds was discovered by a Spanish company called PharmaMar and is currently in human clinical trials.

SPEAKER BACKGROUND Dr. John Scarpa is an Associate Scientist in the Division of Aquaculture. His research concentrates on improving culture methods for aquatic organisms through breeding, nutrition, and environmental manipulation. His current research focuses improving farmed clam survival in Florida waters. This summer he will also begin examining the sunray venus clam as an alternate species for hard clam farmers of Florida. Scarpa's other research interests include developing culture technology for aquatic species that contain pharmaceutical compounds, improving oyster disease resistance, and examining environmental parameters necessary to culture marine shrimp in fresh water. He received his Ph.D. in Wildlife and Fisheries Sciences from Texas A&M University.

DETAILS Scarpa's talk, "The Sensible Sea Squirt," will be held in the auditorium of the Johnson Education Center on the Harbor Branch Campus, 5600 US 1 North, Ft. Pierce, Fla. at 4:00 p.m. and 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday, March 8. All talks in the Ocean Science Lecture Series are free to the public and followed by a free reception. A cash bar is available before and after the 7:00 p.m. talk.Ê Please direct press inquiries to Mark Schrope at 772-216-0390 or schrope@hboi.edu. General questions about the series should be directed to the Marine Education Office at 772-465-2400 ext. 506 or education@hboi.edu.

HARBOR BRANCH Oceanographic Institution was founded in Ft. Pierce, Fla., in 1971 to support the exploration and conservation of the world's oceans. The institution has held to this mission and grown into one of the world's leading oceanographic institutions with a 500-acre campus, over 200 personnel, and a fleet of sophisticated research ships and submersibles.