Seagrasses on the Catalogue of Organisms blog

Seagrasses and photos from TeamSeagrass are featured in Flowers in the Water (Taxon of the Week: Hydrocharitaceae) on the Catalogue of Organisms by Christopher Taylor. Go read all about them!

Do also check out the rest of the Catalogue of Organisms blog with lots of fascinating entries about the amazing lifeforms on our planet. As Christopher Taylor describes his blog on the Nature Blog Network: "The Catalogue of Organisms looks at the diversity of life on Earth, past or present, from spiders smaller than bacteria to ducks bigger than elephants. Multicellular bacteria, carnivorous fungi and foot-long protozoa also considered."

Dead dugong in Phuket likely killed by fishing equipment

Phuket Gazette 3 Mar 09;

AO PANWA, PHUKET: An examination of a dead dugong found floating in Phang Nga Bay late last month suggests it died suddenly of injuries sustained though contact with fishing equipment, a leading marine biologist has revealed.

A ferry found the female dugong on February 27 and its crew brought the 1.6-meter, 86-kilogram carcass to the Phuket Marine Biological Center (PMBC) for examination.

The examination, which took place this afternoon, revealed that the dugong appeared to have been in a healthy condition right up to the moment of death.

Veterinarian Sontaya Manawattana told the Gazette that “sea grass was still left in her mouth, proving that the dugong was eating food only moments before she died. This indicates that she was healthy.”

It is suspected that the mammal died as the result of an encounter with fishing equipment.

This latest discovery marks the eighth recorded dugong death since October, 2008.

“The dugong population numbers about 250 in the Andaman Sea and around 50 in the Gulf of Thailand. They are in danger of disappearing from the Andaman Sea altogether, so they need to be protected,” said Dr Sontaya.

Seagrasses vital for fish stocks

Fish stock habitat a weak spot
ScienceAlert 4 Mar 09;

NIWA scientists have discovered that nearly all snapper on the west coast of the North Island come from nurseries in just one harbour.

Snapper is New Zealand’s largest recreational fishery, and one of the country’s largest coastal commercial fisheries with an annual export value of $32 million (2008).

But in recent years some stocks have failed to recover from historical overfishing, with some commercial catch quotas for snapper being cut recently to protect the species.

In 2003, NIWA scientists collected juvenile snapper from seven estuaries along the west coast of the North Island.

By testing their ear bones (otoliths) for eight different chemical elements, scientists were able to create a ‘chemical signature’ to identify which estuary the fish came from.

Four years on, a sample of 140 adult snapper was collected from commercial catches, from Ninety Mile Beach to Mana Island in Wellington.

The analysis of these snapper using the ‘chemical signatures’ established is now complete. The scientists found that 98 percent of the adult snapper were originally juveniles from Kaipara Harbour.

NIWA Fisheries Ecologist Dr Mark Morrison said the discovery is a significant breakthrough for scientists working on ways to maintain and potentially increase snapper and other fisheries stocks.

“These findings show how fragile some New Zealand snapper and other coastal fish stocks could be. It highlights the importance of protecting natural habitats, like Kaipara Harbour.”

“Any negative impacts on the production of juvenile fish in the harbour will cascade through into a much larger coastal ecosystem, ultimately having a huge effect on the abundance of fish over a 700-kilometre coastline,” Dr Morrison says.

Kaipara Harbour is under threat from human activities – particularly land uses which causes sedimentation, eutrophication, and changes in water quality. These effects can all damage the biogenic (living) nursery habitat of snapper (usually seagrasses and horse mussel beds). It is likely other west coast harbours were also once important nurseries.

NIWA is now working on ways to restore and recover the habitats. This work includes using artificial seagrass habitats to understand why the fish value that environment, as well as the possible consequences on snapper numbers if the habitat was lost or destroyed.

Early indications from a recent experiment in Whangapoua Estuary, Coromandel, suggest a strong positive correlation between increasing seagrass blade densities and juvenile snapper (and other fish species) abundance. Reductions in seagrass blade densities are a sign of environmental degradation of seagrass meadows, which may reduce their value to small fish.

“Now that we know more about where the important nurseries are, we need to know why snapper larvae settle there, and how we can stop degradation of their habitat. Our aim is to be able to advise coastal resource managers on the likely consequences of different habitat management to fish stocks so that we can ensure that recreational, customary, and commercial fishing can continue in the future.”

WWF-Malaysia supports call for seagrass protection

WWF 23 Jan 09

We refer to the article by Mr. Mah Hong Seng “Seagrass of great value” (The Star, Jan 1, 2009) and the response from the Department of Fisheries Malaysia (DoFM) (The Star, Jan 21, 2009).

We fully support the call by Mr. Mah Hong Seng for the proper management and protection of the seagrass at the Merambong site. We are also very happy to note that DoFM has taken this very seriously and recognizes the importance of seagrass as essential food for threatened marine animals. We hope that DoFM will also proactively take the lead in pushing for better management and protection of other marine ecosystems for fish resources and other endangered marine animals.

Coastal habitats are not given enough attention and protection. Examples of some coastal habitats that warrant protections are coastal mudflats which are important for cockle culture e.g. the Kuala Selangor mudflats. The Kilim-Kisap Mangrove forest, the largest in Langkawi, is slowly losing its mangrove stretches to aquaculture. Some of the islands around Langkawi have good coral cover but no protection. Coastal and marine habitats in Sabah are similarly under threat and in need of greater protection, particularly in Kudat-Banggi and Semporna areas.

Overall, not only are many of the natural habitats and marine ecosystems degraded or destroyed but fish stocks have also declined substantially. In some areas the declines have been as high as 95%. Today less than 0.5% of Malaysia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) waters are gazetted as Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and these cover mainly offshore islands. WWF-Malaysia would like to see a much higher percentage of the EEZ covered by MPAs to enable fish stocks recovery from the current overfished status.

DoFM must be proactive in taking new measures to sustainably manage our fish resources. In this respect, we strongly urge DoFM to consider Ecosystem Based Management of Fisheries (EBMF) as an alternative management tool. EBMF is a management tool that involves all interested parties such as stakeholders, managers and decision makers in the consultation, planning and execution phases of any management undertaking. WWF-Malaysia is willing and prepared to cooperate with DoFM in seeing to the adoption of EBMF as a management tool.

From: Dato' Dr. Dionysius S.K. Sharma D.P.M.P., Executive Director/CEO, WWF-Malaysia

Seagrass fungus a promising cancer drug?

Having Scoured the Ocean for Cancer Drugs, Nereus Aims to Prove Its Concept Works
Luke Timmerman, www.xconomy.com 26 Feb 09;

Off the coast of the Bahamas, in sea grass more than a half-mile deep, San Diego-based Nereus Pharmaceuticals found a fungus that may be the key ingredient for an innovative new cancer drug. This will be a key year for gathering evidence that will either support or debunk the idea.

I got the download on Nereus last week in a conversation with co-founder and CEO Kobi Sethna and Charles White, the company’s chief business officer. Nereus has raised a whopping $125 million in venture capital in almost a decade of business, from big name investors like Roche Venture Fund, Alta Partners, and San Diego-based Forward Ventures, among others, so I figured it was worth taking a look.

The company is built on the idea that many of the biggest pharmaceutical breakthroughs, like penicillin, come from natural microbes. The bulk of these fungi and bacteria that led to drugs come from land, but, of course, Mother Nature has plenty of more biodiversity in the ocean. After years of sailing expeditions that trawled up potential drug candidates in hot and cold water, shallow and deep, from the Pacific and the Atlantic, Nereus has looked at hundreds of candidates for treating autoimmune disease and cancer—and now has settled on two lead horses against cancer that it thinks have a real shot. So the sailing expeditions are over, and now it’s time to push through the hard, unpredictable slog of clinical trials to see if these drugs really work in people.

“In this business, you’ve got to be focused. It’s the name of the game,” Sethna says. “We’ve morphed into an oncology company.”

So what does Nereus have to show for all that investment? The lead candidate (the one found off the coast of the Bahamas) is called NPI-2358. It’s a small-molecule drug synthesized in the lab to be similar in structure to a unique fungus it found in the ocean. This drug is designed to be a “vascular disrupting agent” to tumors. It’s made to attack existing blood vessels in tumors, unlike big-name cancer drugs like Genentech’s bevacizumab (Avastin) or Pfizer’s sunitinib (Sutent) that are meant to block the formation of new blood vessels to tumors, White says.

The reason the Nereus drug is still alive in the clinic is that it showed a long-lasting, potent ability to disrupt tumor blood flow, without causing the heart damage that has plagued other vascular-disrupting drugs in the class, White says. The first clinical trials supported further testing, confirming the drug wasn’t harming the heart while shrinking tumors at least partially for about three-fourths of patients when given in combination with Sanofi-Aventis’ docetaxel (Taxotere).

This molecule is in competition with Waltham, MA-based Oxigene’s OXi4503, which is in early clinical trials, and about “five or six others” still in animal testing, White says. The advantage he sees with the Nereus drug is that it appears to enhance the effectiveness of chemotherapy, without adding on any new layers of toxic side effects, as often happens with chemo cocktails. The drug is currently being tested against lung cancer, the leading cancer killer in the U.S.

The second drug, called NPI-0052, requires a little more science explanation. It’s a proteasome inhibitor, derived again from an ocean bacteria called an actinomycete. It’s meant to be a second-generation drug following behind the success of Takeda Pharmaceutical’s bortezomib (Velcade). Drugs in this class are meant to disable the action of enzymes that normally clean up debris in cells. When this ability is disrupted, proteins build up in the tumor cells, sending them into a self-destruct mode called apoptosis. The Nereus drug is thought to block more of the proteasome sites on cells, providing a more effective shutdown, White says. Early trials also suggest the Nereus drug doesn’t cause nerve damage in the hands and feet that limits usage of the Takeda rival, and may work in patients who resist the other treatment. “We don’t get the side effect issue that limits Velcade. Our safety profile is far better,” White says.

That’s a bold thing to say about a competitor that exceeded $1 billion in sales last year, especially when his company’s contender is still in the first of three phases of clinical trials. Nereus, with 25 to 30 employees, has no drugs on the market. By the end of this year, the company expects to have data on its first drug— NPI-2358. —from a trial of 154 patients with non-small-cell lung cancer. Like many companies, Nereus hopes to capture the attention of the leading lights in cancer research at the top two industry conferences of the year, the American Society of Clinical Oncology in late May/early June and the American Society of Hematology in December.

Whatever data is revealed at those meetings will go a long way toward determining if Nereus really can sink or swim (sorry for the ocean pun, but couldn’t resist.) Even in the recession, we’ve seen signs lately in Boston (Vertex Pharmaceuticals) and in Seattle (Seattle Genetics) that companies that can deliver stellar clinical trial results can still be rewarded with financing or partnerships to take them through the most expensive, final phase of development to win FDA approval. Nereus can only hope its data turns out according to plan, and that investors or partners will still be in the mood to finance of its progression to the ultimate proving ground in development—Phase III clinical trials.

“We can’t do anything until we prove these products deliver the kind of data that we’re looking for,” Sethna says.

Bahrain's seagrass and dugongs possible World Heritage Marine Site

Heritage hope for new sites
Rebecca Torr Gulf Daily News 25 Feb 09;

A MARINE ecosystem that stretches across Bahrain and other GCC countries could be nominated as a World Heritage Site.

Particular marine areas in the east of Bahrain have the potential to be part of a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) World Heritage Marine Site because of their sea grass and dugong (sea cow) population, said a heritage expert.

"Bahrain's sea grass and dugongs could be a possibility for a World Heritage Marine Site," Culture and Information Ministry adviser for natural heritage Dr Saeed Al Khuzaie told the GDN.

"But it will be part of a large area because the population of dugongs are also from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and maybe even the UAE.

"There are no boarders on ecosystems. We think of large areas to be considered as World Heritage Marine Sites."

He said Bahrain had other sites such as oyster beds that could be consider as world heritage, but they would qualify as cultural heritage sites rather than marine.

"To be selected as a World Heritage Site, it has to be unique," said Dr Al Khuzaie.

"For example, if it is a coral reef, compared to all other reefs in the world, it will have to show it is globally unique - it must have what we call 'Outstanding Universal Value'.

"To be on the list is a worldwide recognition that you are protecting a site not only for national interest but also for global interest - for humanity.

"For example, Qal'at Al Bahrain (Bahrain Fort) is a World Heritage Site because it is the only capital in the world for the Dilmun civilisation."

Dr Al Khuzaie said for the Gulf area that supports sea grass and dugongs to become a World Heritage Marine Site, it would require co-operation between countries.

"The Gulf must work together to research this special feature. We must prepare the file jointly," he said.

"The site has to be unique, natural phenomenon and not replicated in other places."

Dr Al Khuzaie was speaking on the sidelines of the opening of the three-day workshop on the global marine heritage site selection and world heritage and marine protected areas in the Gulf and Red Sea.

"The workshop will have an outcome that will discuss the recommendations for sites in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf," said Dr Al Khuzaie.

Bahrain is one of 21 countries to be elected onto the Unesco World Heritage Committee.

Since Bahrain was elected in October 2007, it has been working with various regions of the world to help in the preservation and promotion of cultural and natural heritage.

"To be a member, you need to have a programme on how you will contribute - this is one of the obligations of being in the committee," explained Dr Al Khuzaie.

"We are assisting Sudan and providing them international expertise to help them prepare a nomination file for their marine sites."

The workshop is held under the patronage of Southern Governor and Public Commission for the Protection of Marine Resources, Environment and Wildlife president Shaikh Abdulla bin Hamad Al Khalifa at the Novotel Al Dana Resort Bahrain.

It is organised by the Culture and Information Ministry, Unesco and the public commission.

The event brings together International Union for Conservation of Nature - World Commission on Protected Area (IUCN-WCPA) marine regional co-ordinators, international experts, individuals and authorities.

Almost 200 of the 878 World Heritage Sites are listed for their natural values and 37 are protected for their marine biodiversity values.

Marine sites are also considered an area of potential for future nominations of World Heritage properties in the Arab region.

Several such initiatives are currently under discussion in the region.

The results of the workshop are expected to accelerate the recognition of marine protected areas and other related initiatives at global and regional levels.

A report on the workshop will be published and presented to the Unesco World Heritage Committee to assist in the future targeting of marine activities by Unesco and IUCN.