Dr. Craig Venter, the scientist best known for sequencing the human genetic map, has won funding to do the same thing with the Sargasso Sea.

Dr. Venter will be working with the Bermuda Biological Station for Research (BBSR) to try to genetically sequence samples found by the team off the Island.

The US Department of Energy has given Dr. Venter, a trustee of BBSR, $9 million to try to sequence the genomes of every organism that can be found off Bermuda.

The three year project is designed to see if he can find "new methods for carbon sequestration or alternative energy production and will work to engineer a particular type of microbe that could produce hydrogen, an important component in our clean energy future, said US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

BBSR director Dr.Tony Knap said yesterday that Dr. Venter's teams will collaborate with a Bio Station programme, funded by the US National Science Foundation for the past six years, to understand microbes in the ocean.

BBSR has already done some genetic sequencing of organisms in the Sargasso Sea, but it does not have the powerful computers which Dr Venter has to try do a complete genetic sequence.

Dr. Knap said: "We have been doing genomics to look at the genes, but we don't have the sequencing capacity that Craig Venter has.

"The throughput through these labs is massive, so we look for a partnership.

"We have studied one spot of ocean here for longer than anywhere else in the world to see how these organisms do the things they do, and we have found these organisms have genes that allow them to do things that were not normally possible.

"The $9 million he has got is to add to the programmes he has already invested in off here for the past few months.

"Research has been going on off Bermuda for the last 50 years. Genomics is another tool that allows us to understand the ocean even more.

"We've been taking samples with Craig's people and we analyse the water. What we bring to the table is our understanding of the ocean, our ship, and our understanding of how the ocean works, because he isn't an oceanographer."

Dr. Venter, who left Celera Genomics Inc. after it raced with publicly funded researchers to finish the map of the human genome in 2000, said the hi-tech instruments used in that effort would make the new project possible.

"It's sort of a shotgun sequence of the ocean," said Dr. Venter, whose new venture is based in Maryland near Celera's headquarters and those of another organisation he helped found, The Institute for Genomic Research.

"We are now trying to see if we can do hundreds of thousands of organisms simultaneously."

The Sargasso Sea works well because it is considered an ecological "desert" with relatively little life. Known for its warm, crystalline waters, the sea is covered with huge, floating mats of sargassum seaweed, for which it is named.

The project might help explain why the region is so devoid of life - or whether it is as empty of life as it seems to be.

"It's going to start to give us a catalogue of what's here," Dr. Venter told Reuters news agency. We'll know who's there and what they are doing."

Venter said his team would throw a mixture of organisms from the sea into IBEA's genome sequencing equipment and see what comes out.

"We will have the first major results by this summer," Venter predicted. "We will let the computer sort it all out."

He said tests showed that the computers could differentiate the genome from one organism from that of another, even when the information was muddled up together.