It really is just a matter of perspective. For some, the world is a mass of continents, abruptly divided by oceans. For others, the globe is a watery realm, occasionally punctuated by a continent. For researchers funded by the Northeast Sea Grant programs, the latter view prevails: The earth is one big marine laboratory, stretching from Southeast Asia and the Labrador Sea right back to local waters.

Sometimes Sea Grant activities leap whole from the local to the international. Such was the case with Rhode Island Sea Grant coastal management efforts.

Through its coastal management component, the Coastal Resources Center (CRC), Rhode Island Sea Grant began work in the 1970s and 1980s on coastal pond management, developing the concept of Special Area Management Plans (SAMPs). In addition, Sea Grant staff began compiling local ecological histories for the coastal and salt pond areas. "Ecological histories use rapid participatory assessment techniques to get a history of the people and the place to see what environmental issues are most important to address," explains Virginia Lee, CRC domestic programs manager and Rhode Island Sea Grant Extension leader.

Taking the research results garnered from Sea Grant work in Rhode Island, CRC staff have worked with universities and nongovernment organizations in various countries to help manage coastal resources. In 1984, CRC entered into a cooperative 10-year agreement with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to conduct coastal assessment projects in Sri Lanka, Thailand, and Ecuador. "Rhode Island is the living lab for Sea Grant," says Lee. "At CRC we try to repeat our successes from Rhode Island internationally."

As a result of CRC work in Thailand, the University of Thailand is now the focal point of coastal management in Southeast Asia. With grants from various countries and foundations, the university is becoming a training center on coastal management techniques for other Asian countries.

In Ecuador, CRC transposed the idea of SAMPs to the country’s coastal regions. CRC staff assisted Ecuadorans in identifying five special coastal areas. Local committees then decided upon the key environmental issues facing each area, and CRC staff helped those committees devise policies for the areas’ management. "Now we are helping the regions implement a five-year management plan using a variety of different enforcement means, including local ordinances," reports Pam Rubinoff, CRC coastal planner and international project manager.

CRC recently began a six-year USAID project with Mexico to encourage appropriate management practices along the nation’s coasts. In the Yucatan peninsula, coastal development is flourishing. Few established communities exist within the region, so CRC staff have developed public-private partnerships with developers. In cooperation with a Mexican nongovernment organization and the University of Mexico, CRC staff are drafting a manual on best management practices for coastal development and training individuals to work as coastal extension agents in other Mexican regions.

Aquatic Nuisance Connection

Researchers at the New York and Connecticut Sea Grant programs are connected to Europe through the odd link of zebra mussels. The invasive freshwater creature that has beset the Great Lakes and Midwest was found recently in Irish waters.

Chuck O’Neill, New York Sea Grant coastal resource specialist, is project director for the National Zebra Mussel and Aquatic Nuisance Clearinghouse at the State University of New York at Rockport. He presented information on zebra mussel control and prevention techniques at a conference in Ireland this winter. The three-day conference, cosponsored by Connecticut Sea Grant, took place under the aegis of the Sea Grant Irish-American Aquaculture Initiative.

"Ireland is now where we were nine years ago, when the mussels were first found," O’Neill reports. The mussels reproduce rapidly and may
affect the ecology of freshwater lakes and rivers, clog industrial intake pipes, and devastate freshwater fisheries. Through the Aquaculture Initiative, Sea Grant programs are transferring information to the Netherlands and Germany, as well as to Northern Ireland and Ireland.

Recognizing the growing national and international need for technical information on zebra mussels, the New York Sea Grant Program created the National Zebra Mussel and Aquatic Nuisance Clearinghouse in 1991. "The library now is the largest in the world," notes O’Neill. A National Zebra Mussel Training Initiative, as well as a web site, has been created with support from the Great Lakes Sea Grant programs.

This global exchange works both ways. Two years ago, with support from NOAA’s Office of International Affairs, Connecticut Sea Grant brought visiting scientists from China to teach courses on scallop aquaculture at regional vocational aquaculture programs Sea Grant helped establish in Bridgeport and New Haven.

"This year we have two Chinese scientists over to work on seaweed aquaculture at the University of Connecticut in Stamford and another involved in crustacean aquaculture at the Storrs campus," says Ed Monahan, Connecticut Sea Grant director.

Sea Grant support has helped some researchers garner additional financial assistance for projects of broad geographic scope. Lawrence Hamilton, University of New Hampshire sociology professor, was awarded a small grant from the Maine/New Hampshire Sea Grant program in 1993 to do preliminary research on how North Atlantic fishing communities are adapting to ecological changes. (See related story, this issue.) Hamilton visited communities in Iceland and Newfoundland under that grant. He then wrote a successful multiyear grant proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF), expanding on his Sea Grant research.

Under the NSF grant, Hamilton and colleagues returned to Iceland and Newfoundland to examine the differences between management of fish and the management of people. "Iceland," Hamilton explains wryly, "is a rock surrounded by fish." One-half of the total exports from Iceland are fish, and the challenge is to manage fish sustainably and still maintain a viable fishing industry.

Both Newfoundland and Iceland use quotas to allocate fish stocks. While this management technique has been considered efficient, Hamilton foresees specific social consequences. "The general trend all over is toward concentration of resources in a smaller number of hands and a smaller number of ports," he notes. This shift is clearly illustrated by the abandoned outports of Newfoundland.

Plumbing Deeper Depths

In addition to studying how people interact with the oceans, Sea Grant researchers also focus on the oceans themselves. Jim Bellingham is principal research engineer in MIT Sea Grant’s Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) Laboratory, which was established in 1989. Bellingham has spent the past 10 years developing small, high-performance underwater vehicles to probe the oceans’ depths.

"What we do here is develop the technology for autonomous vehicles rather than remotely operated vehicles like Jason at WHOI," says Bellingham. Physical oceanography is an expensive field of science: The oceans are very big and deep. Introducing scientific instruments throughout the ocean, not just at the near surface, is prohibitively expensive. "We can only do tiny swaths right now," explains Bellingham. "What you really want is to free yourself from the expense of a surface vessel and human oversight."

Back in 1989, engineers at the laboratory began by creating the software that would enable a vehicle to complete a specific mission while keeping its heading and depth. Then they constructed the actual machinery. Now in the fourth generation of vehicles, the laboratory has conducted over 300 dives at sea. AUVs have been tested in waters off New Zealand, where they searched for giant squid; British Columbia and Florida; and in the Arctic, Antarctic, Labrador and Mediterranean seas.

Bellingham and colleagues are now testing docking stations on suspended moorings. The vehicles attach themselves to the moorings in order to recharge their batteries, download data to researchers via modem, and take shelter during bad weather.

None of this could have happened without the initial Sea Grant support, concludes Bellingham. "Initially it was hard to convince anyone that this was important, that we were developing an instrument that we would risk tossing over the side of a ship."

David Aubrey, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) geology and geophysics senior scientist, is working on a project in Portugal that draws on previous Sea GrantÐsupported research. His earlier research examined multiple tidal inlets in Massachusetts and Florida, focusing on the variables that combine to make tidal inlet series stable over decades and even centuries.

Aubrey now works with Paulo Salles, a joint MIT/WHOI doctoral candidate, to evaluate multiple tidal inlets in a Portuguese embayment. The project is part of a multidisciplinary coastal processes research project in the Algarve region, involving 16 European and non-European universities.

In Portugal, scientists will monitor a 50-kilometer lagoon comprising seven tidal inlets that have remained stable, according to records, since the 16th century. The three-year project, funded by the European Economic Community, will use data drawn from the bay to construct a computer model of the inlet system. The results may help coastal managers better understand the forces that cause intertidal inlet systems to remain stable.

Molecular Mysteries

From computer modelling to the most up-to-date molecular science, Northeast Sea GrantÐsupported research finds applications throughout the world. Maine/New Hampshire Sea Grant funded the genetic research work of Bruce Nicholson, University of Maine biochemistry, microbiology, and molecular biology professor. That research led to development of a less expensive, standardized testing technique for aquatic viruses that is now used worldwide.

"We adapted the breakthrough in development of monoclonal antibodies to aquaculture disease testing," Nicholson explains. Sea Grant and the Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station funded his research for 10 years.

The problem with finfish aquaculture continues to be exposure to viruses. Aquaculturists attempt to limit exposure of their fish through extensive, regular testing.

"In the old days, it would take about three to five weeks just to know that there was a virus, and then an additional two to three weeks for identification of the specific species. That’s a long time for a fish farmer to wait," notes Nicholson.

Viruses, unlike bacteria, have no metabolism of their own. Their technique when invading a host is akin to the Trojan horse at the siege of Troy. A virus can penetrate the membrane of a host cell within the body, assume its DNA and metabolism, and replicate itself exponentially. Very sensitive detection devices, operating at the molecular level, are required to identify any virus.

With the monoclonal antibodies testing methods, a laboratory can isolate an aquatic virus within 24 hours. Using a panel of 11 monoclonal antibodies, that is, a single antigen per culture, a laboratory can now determine the presence of a virus in short order. One of the 11 monoclonal cell cultures recognizes a virus component that all fish viruses worldwide carry–a viral "common denominator." A tissue sample is first tested against the common denominator, to see if it is an aquatic virus; identification is further refined through a process of elimination against the other 10 monoclonal antibodies. "You get a unique pattern of reaction when you test 10 antibodies against the nine major viruses worldwide. Our lab was the very first in the world to demonstrate that this works," says Nicholson.

Taking another biotechnology breakthrough–the development of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) made famous in the O.J. Simpson trial–Nicholson moved into even more rarified territory. "Using PCR we can identify specific viruses in 24 hours directly from fish tissues, rather than waiting the standard three to five weeks," he says. This research began with Sea Grant support in 1991; Nicholson recently completed a successful field trial and is embarking on a larger, two-year trial.

With coinvestigator John Singer, University of Maine microbiology associate professor, Nicholson also is working on genetically engineered vaccines for aquatic viruses. "People don’t appreciate that all this genetic-bioengineering-cloning stuff is affecting them every day," he comments, pointing to applications such as genetically engineered tomatoes, animal feeds, and medicines. "Mundane sorts of things are changed, and people don’t know it."

Also working at the molecular level, but distant from the cold shores of New England, is Irv Kornfield, University of Maine zoology professor and 1997 Distinguished Maine Professor. Kornfield has spent over 20 years studying cichlid (SEE-klid) fish in three lakes in the eastern equatorial region of Africa.

The lakes in which Kornfield works are unusually deep and isolated from other water bodies. He is trying to answer a seemingly simple question: How did so many different fish species from the same family come into existence so quickly in these lakes? "The lakes are evolutionary cradles, full of endemic species," says Kornfield, comparing them to the Galapagos or Hawaiian islands. Within the lakes, the cichlid fishes –all from a single family–have filled every available ecological niche. "More interesting is that they spread out into the lakes very, very rapidly, in perhaps thousands of years, not millennia," continues Kornfield.

Kornfield is using DNA testing to look at the population biology of the fish. A microbiological technique known as Simple Sequence Repeats (SSR) allows a researcher to characterize relationships among individual populations. The test is highly sensitive to slight differences among genetic material and is commonly used in forensic science.

In his Sea GrantÐsupported research in the Gulf of Maine, Kornfield "used the same techniques to examine differences among lobster and herring stocks." He also notes that the research showed offshore and nearshore lobsters were not members of the same population, countering long-held opinions on the subject.

Insights Into China

Out in the turbulent waters of the South China Sea, Neal Pettigrew, University of Maine oceanography associate professor, has begun a long-term monitoring project that also harkens back to his earlier work in the Gulf of Maine. Because China was closed to foreigners for so long, the sea has not been studied with modern oceanographic techniques. With assistance from Chinese scientists, Pettigrew will examine the Pearl River influx into the sea, as well as currents and circulation patterns.

Pettigrew and his graduate assistant will spend two years gathering hydrographic and physical oceanographic data. Afterward, they will run a numerical model to predict circulation in the sea.

Prior to this work, Pettigrew studied circulation in the Gulf of Maine. Concentrating on the eastern Gulf and Scotian shelf waters, he discovered a previously unrecognized gyre over Georges Basin. "We already knew there was a circulation gyre over Jordan Basin," he recalls. "With the new gyre, the two together provide a pathway along their western edges to Georges Bank in about 30 days." It had been thought that water from the eastern Gulf of Maine took approximately 90 days to travel around the perimeter of the Gulf to Georges Bank. The implications of this circulation pattern are particularly relevant to oil spills or other pollution events off eastern Maine.

Sea Grant now funds Pettigrew’s work on the circulatory interaction between the Kennebec River estuary and Casco Bay in Maine. Because red tide outbreaks often begin around the mouth of the Kennebec, resource managers are eager to know
more about the area’s circulation patterns.

While researchers funded by Northeast Sea Grant programs may be based in one small corner of the world, their projects–and the potential applications of that work–take them to all points of the globe’s compass. And through their research, these scientists are turning that old aphorism, "Think globally, act locally," neatly on its head.