experts gathered at the Bermuda Biological Station for Research last week.

The tie, emblazoned with national flags and faces of representative ethnic groups and worn by US Government official William Suk, said it all about ocean pollution and its impact on people.

It symbolised connection between all the world's people, showing that when one group pollutes, it affects all people.

"When humans affect the health of oceans,'' Dr. Suk told the group, "oceans affect the health of humans. We end up getting it all back anyway.'' Sixty percent of the earth's six billion people live within 60 kilometres of the ocean coast and most of them rely on the ocean for their survival.

Whether through the food supply, transportation, drinking water, waste dumping, or even tourism, mankind's future and health is tied to the ocean and its health.

The scientists, policy makers, and medical experts are gathered for the Indicators of Ocean and Human Health workshop which ended last Friday.

The field of marine environmental health has taken off in the last few years, and each speaker at the morning introduction hailed the Bio Station's new International Centre for Ocean and Human Health.

The seminar is hosted by Bio Station director Tony Knap. Also attending is Umit Unulata of the Intergovernmental Oceanic Committee and United Nations Educational Scientific Cultural Organisation.

"This is a timely and important workshop -- cutting edge,'' said Kenneth Olden, director of the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), a part of the National Institute of Health.

"As we approach the 21st Century one of the most important challenges is the use of surrogate markers so that we can monitor environmental quality,'' Dr.

Olden continued. "This workshop is ahead of its time.'' Dr. Olden's institute is the only branch of the US government tasked to monitor the impact of human exposure to the ocean's pollutants and the impact on the water itself.

He called the organisers "visionary'' and said the workshop would lead to research on the complex indices of disease and toxins found in the oceans and the animal and plant life there.

"We must work to make the technology available to and practical for every country, not just the industrialised ones,'' Dr. Olden said, adding that pollution, population, poverty, and the oceans are interrelated.

"They don't recognise borders. If we fail to deal with this problem effectively, we jeopardise physical and mental health as we know it.'' Mr. Suk, director of programme development at NIEHS, told the group he was excited by the workshop which would prompt governments to realise the impact environment induced disasters like El Nino can have on human health.

"People in South Carolina know this very well when they're downwind of the dead cattle after Hurricane Floyd,'' he said.

Eric Dewailly, a Laval University professor, detailed his research among Inuit (Eskimo) populations in Nunavut and Northern Quebec and isolated bi-racial fishing villages along the Canadian coast.

Research has shown such people's diets have traditionally been based on fish meat and marine mammal blubber.

Arctic people have few of the diseases associated with the food and lifestyle of the western world like heart disease, prostate cancer, or diabetes.

Only recently has pollution begun to affect them -- pollution produced by the major western countries.

ENVIRONMENT ENV SCIENCE SCI