Scientist Mine Ocean Depths for New Drugs
Rhonda Moniz
February 28, 2013
European scientists are planning to explore deep trenches off the coast of New Zealand in an effort to find new antibiotics. The project is called PharmaSea and is lead by Aberdeen University. The project says they will begin work at the Atacama Trench in the eastern Pacific Ocean, 161 kilometers off the coast of Chile and Peru and then move to New Zealand. They will also explore trenches in the Southern Ocean, in the northwest Pacific and off Norway. Project leader Marcel Jaspars said there had not been a completely new antibiotic registered since 2003. There was growing resistance to the drugs. Using fishing vessels, researchers will drop a sampler on a reel of cables to the trench bed to collect sediment.