Turmeric, spicy recipe ingredient for red tide?
Panelists at the annual Red Tide Forum shared that the latest word on red tide could be turmeric.
The fourth in-person Red Tide Forum was held in the Community Center Auditorium on Tuesday afternoon, March 19. The forum was hosted by Mote Marine Laboratory and Aquarium in partnership with the Barrier Island Parks Society.
The panel included Cynthia Heil, senior scientist and director of Mote’s Red Tide Institute, and Richard Pierce, senior scientist for ecotoxicology and associate vice president for research, director of environmental health and ocean technology, also at Mote Marine Laboratory. They were joined by Yonggang Liu, director of the Ocean Circulation Lab at USF, and associate editor for AMS Journal.
“Here my goal is a scientific test to establish the efficacy of the product against red tide cells and toxins and identify its safety to other wildlife,” Pierce said.
The challenge scientists are faced with is reducing red tide cells while also eliminating the toxins that they produce. Mote uses a tiered approach that begins with research and lab experiments and results in field application. At Mote, they grow their own red tide for experiments.
Red tide, or Karenia brevis, produces neurotoxins that affect the nervous system in the same way that some pesticides do, which makes it such a public health hazard, Pierce said. It travels through the food chain, killing fish and wildlife, and it can poison shellfish, rendering them inedible.
Typically, most red tide starts during the months of July, August and September, and by April about 75 percent of the blooms have ended. Pinpointing initiation is the most difficult part of this research, Heil said, but models, such as the ones Liu creates, can use data points to help track the red tide.
One product Heil has had a lot of success with at Mote is curcumin, which is a compound in the turmeric root. Turmeric is commonly used as a health supplement for its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties, but the same product anyone can order on Amazon has been found to reduce red tide cells and toxins.
They are not entirely sure why turmeric works, Heil said, but they originally got the idea from an obscure Chinese paper in which they tested turmeric and it worked to reduce both cells and toxins.
“A lot of things will reduce the cells, but not much reduces the toxins,” Heil said. “So, we want them to do both, and curcumin did it very effectively in tier one.”
The main issue they found with curcumin, however, was that it is not soluble, meaning it doesn’t dissolve in water. When it was placed in saltwater, it sat on the surface. They tested many different solvents and ended up with ethanol, discovering that curcumin dissolves in this alcohol.
Interestingly, there is such a thing as white turmeric, which Heil initially was hopeful for; however, in testing it did not work. So, whatever works to reduce red tide cells and toxins in turmeric, is only present in the orange type. They also found through a failed experiment that turmeric has an expiration and did not work if it was past the date.
Heil used sea urchins, clams and crabs to test the curcumin’s effect on marine life and found that adding it actually improved the health of the sea creatures, with no negative outcomes.
The next challenge was finding a way to distribute this product into the water. They rigged up a pump system and found it worked quite effectively.
The next steps involve more testing and a lot of permitting. The EPA has never permitted red tide mitigation before, so it is basically “the Wild West,” Heil said. Additionally, curcumin is technically classified as a pesticide, so getting approval to introduce it into the water comes with its own set of challenges.
“This is a very ambitious venture,” Liu said. “It will take time, but there is hope.”
Another Mote project Heil is working on with Florida Gulf Coast University is composting dead fish at an accelerated rate to be used for fertilizer. They found that it takes about three weeks for toxins from red tide to decay in dead fish, so after that period they are safe to use in fertilizer to grow food.
This is more of a logistical question now, with the challenge being how to collect and process the dead fish, Heil said.
The auditorium was only about half full for the presentation, which could possibly be attributed to the fact that this year is not a red tide blooming year, so people on the island are not experiencing the effects of the toxins like they have in past years.
Liu’s USF red tide models can be found at ocgweb.marine.usf.edu/models.html. Visit mote.org for more information on their red tide research.
