The Bermuda Biological Station for Research (BBSR) is primed to take a lead role in a global initiative to monitor the health of the world's oceans, The Royal Gazette has learned.

The ultimate goal of the initiative is strengthen the understanding of the key links between human health and ocean health before the state of oceans has deteriorated to more dangerous levels.

Biostation director Dr. Tony Knap published an article with ten other scientists highlighting the importance of these in the September issue of "Environmental Health Perspectives", a scientific journal published in the United States.

In the article, the scientists note the need to approach ocean health/human health from a multidisciplinary perspective and the ever increasing level of stress placed on the ocean by an endlessly growing human populations.

With over 60 percent of the world's population living in coastal areas, the need to understand the effects of ocean health on human populations is already acute.

But the scientists also note that current trends indicate more and more people will relocate to coastal areas over the next two decades, exacerbating the situation.

They point out that the number of people living in coastal areas around the globe today exceeds the entire world population of just 50 years ago.

"This settlement pattern has exacerbated the rate of change in coastal systems and has already placed the goal of 'sustainable development' - the balanced socio-economic benefit of the marine environment - out of reach for some regions," the authors noted.

"The world population is estimated to increase from about six billion currently to 8.3 billion by 2025, with 90 percent of this growth occurring in subtropical and tropical countries.

"Over two billion people worldwide rely on seafood as a major source of protein in their diet and seafood contamination continues to increase worldwide."

The idea for the article originally developed out of a workshop held at the biostation in 1999, BBSR said in a press release.

The workshop attempted to target the areas for interdisciplinary research and training which push ocean health forward and a follow-meeting is currently underway in Capetown, South Africa with 24 scientists from major coastal nations participating, including Dr. Knap.

"One of the challenges is to provide a plan that works both for the developed and less developed countries, and to develop a suite of measures that are acceptable and useful to all counties," Dr. Knap said.

Some 100 countries, at all levels of economic development, have already signed onto the Coastal Ocean Observing System.

"The authors of the Environmental Health Perspectives paper note that the overall goal of such a programme would be the early detection of potential marine-based contaminants, with the ultimate outcome being the preservation of the marine environment (from brackish to open water oceans) and the prevention of associated human illnesses," a BBSR press release said.

"The topics covered include toxic algal blooms, seafood safety issues such as cigatera poisoning, trace metal contamination such as lead and methyl mercury, pesticides and other organic pollutants.

"The scientists call for public health and human health agencies to work together to integrate these ideas.

"Issues in specific geographic areas highlighted for special attention include food-borne risk exposure for native peoples in polar regions, urban harbours and exposure, and, tropical coastal areas and small island states."

The programme is also intended to include an international training component which will see a Masters level university degree developed and implemented between BBSR and the University of North Carolina-Wilmington.