Program: Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health

NSF Award Abstract

The mission of the Woods Hole Center for Oceans and Human Health is to protect the public health through enhanced understanding of how oceanic and environmental processes including climatic variation affect the population dynamics of toxin producing organisms, and the risks from exposure to their potent neurotoxins. Factors affecting the distribution, survival, proliferation, and toxicity of harmful algal bloom (HAB) species still are poorly known, despite their enormous consequences for human health. Three research projects and two cores comprise the Center. The Center structure will facilitate the integration among projects, and the integration of research with education and community engagement activities. The Center will engage stakeholders, facilitate education on HAB science at many academic levels, and strengthen public knowledge about HAB blooms and their impacts. The Center is jointly supported by NSF and by the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS).

The research activities of the Center will focus on two key HAB taxa: Alexandrium fundyense that produces the saxitoxins responsible for paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP), and Pseudo-nitzschia spp. that produce domoic acid responsible for the amnesic shellfish poisoning (ASP) syndrome. Novel, targeted, efficient, and data-rich sampling approaches developed by the applicants and applied in situ have revealed that critical aspects of A. fundyense dynamics in natural settings differ dramatically from those inferred from laboratory studies, indicating plasticity in response to climate. The research proposed will build on these new and fundamental insights into what regulates blooms, and on the Center's established strengths in ocean observation technologies and modeling, to predict how environmental variables may influence population dynamics of known and emerging HAB threats. Hindcast simulations compared with climate data records in the Gulf of Maine will assess model performance and uncertainty. Forecasts run for a range of potential climate scenarios can help quantify future public health risks. Similarly, specific cells have been identified in the developing brain that are targets of HAB toxins, findings giving insights into developmental toxicological mechanisms. These will guide studies to address the scope of toxin effect in the developing central nervous system, potentially linking developmental exposures to adult consequences. Studies of new mechanisms of toxin action will include determination of the effects of combined or repeated exposure to sub-lethal levels of saxitoxin and domoic acid, and possible silent neurotoxicity, at different life stages in the zebrafish model.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

The data management plan for the program can be found here.