Organic resources of the sea

Abstract

Despite the vast number of phyla and species in the sea, the major marine resource will continue to be fish for hum an consumption. At the same time, research on methods of preparing an animal protein concentrate, of high nutritional value and acceptable as human food, has pointed the way for the eventual development of a new technology. Other bulk products of marine life-forms have been suggested as organic resources and include specific fatty acids and prostaglandins as therapeutic agents in human medicine as well as fatty alcohols and invertebrate chitin for industrial purposes. Only a few of the many options are considered here since the product must compete in terms of special properties, cost and availability with those derived from biomass of the land, industrial microbiology and from synthetic products made from fossil hydrocarbons. Many biologically active chemicals have been isolated from marine life-forms, but only a few have been used as systemic drugs and selectively toxic agents (antibiotics) in human medicine. These and other chemicals that accumulate in marine organisms would illustrate that species survival in marine ecosystems have evolved specialized metabolic mechanisms that differ from those of terrestrial life-forms. Progress has been slow but it is with the nature and exploitation of these differences that future marine biological and biochemical research and development should be concerned.