 I'll be talking about marine life with focus in the Philippines. As you very well know, the Philippines is surrounded by marine waters. And we are at the center of the center of marine biodiversity. The ocean is home to a plethora of living organisms from the tiniest of the organism which can be seen only by the microscope or not seen by the naked eye. And of course to the largest creature known to man, like for example the whales that are bigger than the elephants that you have seen. The coral reef for example harbors as much life as a rainforest from the minutest organism to the biggest organisms. You might be familiar with finding them Mimo or Finding Dory and these were films taken in the coral reef ecosystem. The ocean in its vastness represent the greatest extremes of temperature, light and pressure. And these are encountered by the organisms and therefore adaptation to these harsh environments create marine biodiversity and therefore gives the potential for applications like environmental remediation, increasing seafood supply and safety and developing new resources for industrial processes. One giant worm for example which is 1.5 meters long was found in 1977. It was growing in the Pacific Ocean about 2,600 meters below the surface. Bacteria symbion was a good candidate for studies for medicine. The deep sea and organisms found in these deeper parts of the oceans can be potential sources of materials for the industry. For example microbes adapted to the extreme environments can yield powerful tools for medical and other applications like for example the ones that are being used for DNA polymerase have been taken from these deep inhabiting microbes. One fish you might be familiar with is a puffer fish and it is producing tetrodotoxin. And this tetrodotoxin has been used for medical purposes and it might be possible that it can be used for a specific mechanism of action that can be of medical significance. And therefore I'd like to introduce to you a phenomenon which is very well known to most people as a red tide but called technically as harmful algal blooms. And there are organisms that are causing these harmful algal blooms and I'll be giving more examples that are commonly found in the Philippines. The organisms that we will be showing you are the organisms that we have collected from the Philippines and we are culturing for the toxins that they produce and will be used for medical purposes in the long run. There are some invertebrates which are bentic they call this because they are present on the surfaces of other organisms like just corals and they could be reached sources for biotechnology products. One very famous material that has been reported from the Philippines is the konotoxin that was found from the konus shells and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has recently approved the use of this konotoxin as medical drug. Some soft coral contain a prostanglandine and they can be used as anti-wrinkle creams. Fluorescence in many corals may provide novel biotech light sources and some of them are now being used in the medical profession. Some materials coming from seaweeds are used as anti-inflammatory and anti-viral materials and they are found in the tropical areas. The seaweeds are cultured in the Philippines. For example, several species are now being cultured from the wild materials that have been collected in the Philippines. Some of the microalgae can produce kadeik, acid for example that can be again sources of medicine for some other purposes. Some nutritional requirements can be addressed by the algae also from the marine habitat because they produce the so-called PUFA or PUFA to the common man. The other uses of organisms coming from the marine habitat is the corals for example and they use as artificial moons already. Other industrial applications are those coming from jellyfish like for example the fluorescent compounds from the jellyfish novel glues from mussels. The mussels are not only edible but they produce glues that can be used for industrial purposes. Natural products that can be effective as anti-cancers are also collected and identified from assidians or seaweeds. Also aquaculture techniques have been enhanced to produce more materials from other organisms like invertebrates and seaweeds as I had pointed out earlier. Now let's talk about seaweed farming. Many of you are familiar with seaweed from the market and they are eaten asalad. Seaweed farming meaning those that are farmed already because of their high economic value is being done almost in the entire Philippines in many tropical areas in Southeast Asia in also in South American countries and even in Africa. Like for example the Kapaficus alvarecai I'll be showing you the organism later is being farmed worldwide and I think the most economically important seaweed of today. They are found in ice creams as mixtures binders for many materials even for some of the beers that you need to take regularly and some other pastries would need seaweed for example. In the Philippines many of these seaweeds are farmed in the Visayas and in Mindanao as well as in many areas in Luzon. Now the value has been increasing because of some problems relating to changes in climate that are affecting the seaweeds that are being farmed. And so therefore seaweed farming was based on an organism collected from the Philippines developed as a crop and for many decades now giving the industry and the fishermen and some families income which cannot be estimated at this point it could be billions of dollars in fact. Now let's proceed with the so-called harmful algal blooms which this time negatively affect the economy as pointed out earlier but also would affect also the health for example if not manage well. I mentioned a while ago that marine life would give food security and food safety. In fact the Filipinos would be not permanently are basically dependent on the sea for protein source meaning the fish. And so therefore this dependence on fish would be addressed more sustainably if we have fish from the marine environment as needed by the Filipinos. Now for many years now fish production in the Philippines as well as in other countries around the world are dependent in aquaculture not from the natural harvest. So therefore from capture of fish there is less production and from aquaculture there is more production. But along with this increase in aquaculture our problems that are facing our marine seafood sources and so therefore one of the major problems of this seafood industry is the so-called red tide or harmful algal blooms. Now maybe you have not seen this red tide meaning as red as this in the Philippines but I've seen them in many areas. This picture is from my friend an Australian scientist and you can see how red the ocean was during that phenomenon and actually this is caused by a microorganism, a microalgae that has increased in density and this increase in density could cause harm depending on the organisms that are in bloom. There are many causes of red tides or harmful algal blooms. I'd like to mention some anthropogenic factors like for example inputs from the land like fertilizers and even too much feeds being inputted into the water for the aquaculture of fish. There is that harmful algal bloom that is caused bottom from bottom up and those that are caused from top to bottom. So this would change the food chain and therefore would cause the increase in the density of your micro-organism that can cause your harmful algal blooms. Now there is a prediction that with the increase in climate change there will be changes in the micro-phytoplankton that is present in the ocean and so therefore the biodiversity would be changed and therefore would cause more problems in terms of harmful algal blooms. Even shapes can carry harmful microorganisms or harmful phytoplankton from one area to the other. That's the reason why National Maritime Organization has imposed a management scheme that would check this debalasting and balasting of shapes to avoid the transfer of these invasive organisms. I wouldn't want to give a complex picture of harmful algal blooms but to summarize inputs from the land and transfer from one side to the other can cause harmful algal blooms and therefore could impact the industry and as well as cause health problems like poisonings of human beings. Now these are the organisms that we have now cultured, isolated from the Philippines from as many as 10 or more areas in the Philippines and this is a primary cause of paralytic shelfies poisoning in the country and the main cause also for paralytic shelfies poisoning in the tropical world and we have cultured this and we have isolated the so-called pyrodiosacs which are now developing for some medical purposes together with some people from the College of Medicine of UP and probably with some collaborations from universities abroad. Now this is just to show you the extent of the damage not really the economic as well as the health impacts of these organisms throughout Southeast Asia. This would show you the occurrence of the organisms in the area. Now we at the UNESCO we came up with this particular poster to prevent panic of people when there is a bloom of a certain organism because it is only the shellfish which is affected but the other seafood are not affected and therefore this would prevent the so-called halo effect and so therefore would prevent people from buying the other seafood which is negative would have negative effect on the industry. Now actually the intoxication of the organism is through the shellfish. The organism is collected by the shellfish in the marine habitat and therefore they are concentrated on the shellfish and so therefore when the Bureau of Futurist and the aquatic resources puts up a ban, actually the organism has accumulated the shellfish has accumulated the organisms in their body and therefore you the human beings are prevented from taking this. Based on the studies that we have we already have predictions on when they would occur and mostly they occur or they happen during the southwest monsoon which is a period now and so therefore if you look into the newspaper there are a lot of bans in the country for shellfish collection and marketing. So many areas in the country are affected and preventive management has been in place. Now I'd like to show you a very nice picture of what we have found out in terms of the movement of some harmful organism from one country to the other using current systems. For example there was this fish kill in Palawan some years ago and the mayor of Palawan called us to see what was happening about the fish kill. This is another type of an organism that has proliferated and it is the fish which is affected and not the shellfish. So the fish died when they consumed this particular organism. So the water was red. The blue waters of Palawan turned red and so we went there to collect the materials and this would show you the satellite images of how the red tide moved from the southern part of Palawan to the northern part of Palawan but actually the red tide originated from Malaysia which is the one of Palawan. So these are the images and it would show you that the red tide moved from Malaysia Sabah going up to Palawan and it involved several kilometers of water moving following the current of the West Philippine Sea or the South China Sea to some following the current system that time moving from to north and affecting the waters meaning causing fish kill from that area to the other. So it was from Palawan but actually coming from the northern side of Malaysia. The organism is Cochladinium and the bloom sebi-recorded also in other parts of Asia. So like for example in Korea and Japan and of course in Brunei Malaysia and the Philippines and this is the subject of a collaboration between all these countries to see the movement of the organism whether also if they are really diverse or they are of the same organisms and so therefore this would be helpful in the management of this particular organism. Harmful algal blooms do not only affect human beings through the food chain but also affect birds in marine mammals. There have been reports of some marine mammals like for example the manatees that died in Florida in 1996 and also lately in Chile there was a lot of death that was being caused by harmful algal blooms so therefore the marine habitat can be affected completely by these harmful algal blooms causing harm through the food chain and eventually reaching human beings so the effect could be economic or even public health affected by these harmful algal blooms. In closing I'd like to say that the marine habitat is very rich in life. Biodiversity is very rich especially in the Philippines which is the center of the center of marine biodiversity but there is a time for some problems for example when man would interfere with this biodiversity and cause negative impacts in the most commonly recorded events of late especially during the last decade is a so called harmful algal bloom meaning affecting the lowest of the food chain and going through the food chain going up and affecting human beings and other marine life as well. My message here is this, we should love our marine environment it is the heaven of our marine life and especially the Philippines which is the center of the center of marine biodiversity. It is our life especially because the Philippines is made up of 70% water meaning marine waters and only 30% land.