ANNIVERSARY
18
FAU HARBOR BRANCH AT 50
animals, Reed discovered.
Yet even hundreds of feet below the surface, man was
intent on destroying nature’s handiwork.
Reed found clear signs that deep-sea commercial trawlers
were devastating the coral with their heavy nets. So, he began
advocating for federal protection of the reef.
In 1984, Oculina Bank became the first protected deep-sea
reef in the world. Reed subsequently explored even bigger
reefs at depths of up to 2,000 feet off the Bahamas and the
Eastern Seaboard as far north as North Carolina. He was able
to persuade the government to extend federal protection
status to 23,000 square miles of ocean floor.
Reed recalls that Johnson was a regular and enthusiastic
visitor on many ocean cruises. Link was a different kettle of
fish. He was a hard-driving, self-taught, hands-on inventor
who held his employees to high standards.
And he could be a hard taskmaster. When a submersible
had technical issues, Link would roar at the crew not to even
think of going to bed until it was fully operational again for
the next day.
“Every time we dived with the JSLs,” Reed recalls, “we saw
things no one had ever seen before. We discovered new reefs,
new species and new bioactive compounds.”
DISEASE FIGHTERS
Shirley Pomponi was recruited
by Harbor Branch in 1984 for
the SeaPharm Project today it
carries the decidedly less-catchy
name of the Biomedical and Biotechnology
Research Program
identifying medical compounds
from marine organisms.
She has spent her entire 37-
year career at Harbor Branch
collecting, identifying and
processing marine organisms
mostly deep-sea sponges that
have the potential to be powerful
human disease fighters.
Pomponi and her team have
amassed more than 19,000
microbial cultures that contain
promising chemical agents. One such compound is discodermolide,
a chemical found in a deep-sea sponge that became a
candidate for drug trials intended to fight cancer.
Pomponi’s work has also revealed compounds that may
be useful in combating antibiotic-resistant staphylococcus
bacteria, an antiviral chemical that shows promise against
COVID-19, and others that perhaps one day may be used
against pancreatic and lung cancers.
It takes a really long time from the initial assay of such organisms
to final development, Pomponi says, but “it’s really,
really exciting work.”
Her bubbling enthusiasm is echoed by fellow Harbor
Branch researchers. Dennis Hanisak and Brian Lapointe are
long-time employees who concentrate their efforts on water
quality.
SEAGRASS RESEARCH
While Hanisak has worked
for more than four decades on
nutrient overload issues in the
Indian River Lagoon, Lapointe
has spent 30 years researching
the adverse effects of nitrogenladen
sewage on coral reefs in
the Florida Keys. Lapointe has
also studied sargassum seaweed
concentrations in the Caribbean,
which he believes are also due
to sewage-related pollution.
Hanisak has been involved in
aquaculture at Harbor Branch
for many years and established
a seagrass nursery there in 2015.
Prior to that, seagrasses were
dismissed as uninteresting by
many scientists, Hanisak said, but more recently their value
in providing nurseries for juvenile fish and as a vital food
source for manatees is becoming painfully clear.
Hanisak has seen devastating seagrass losses in the lagoon
— over 60% in two years, he notes. The decline and associated
fish kills intensified after 2016, he says, and continues
today. He believes those losses can be reversed in some
areas, but said the northern part in Brevard County which >>
Shirley Pomponi has spent 37
years identifying undersea organisms,
many of them deep-sea
sponges, that could be useful
in the creation of medical compounds.
Dennis Hanisak has been involved
in water-quality and nutrient overload
research in the Indian River
Lagoon for more than 40 years.
The cancer-fighting compound discodermolide, extracted from a sea sponge,
was discovered by Harbor Branch researchers.
Harmful blue-green algae in waters discharged from Lake Okeechobee
have harmed Treasure Coast waterways in the past decade.