Belmont Forum Collaborative Research: PolyCone Project - An Integrated Approach for Sustainable Pathways of Marine Resources: Cone Snails in French Polynesia

This award provides support to U.S. researchers participating in a project competitively selected by a 55-country initiative on global change research through the Belmont Forum. The Belmont Forum is a consortium of research funding organizations focused on support for transdisciplinary approaches to global environmental change challenges and opportunities.

It aims to accelerate delivery of the international research most urgently needed to remove critical barriers to sustainability by aligning and mobilizing international resources. Each partner country provides funding for their researchers within a consortium to alleviate the need for funds to cross international borders. This approach facilitates effective leveraging of national resources to support excellent research on topics of global relevance best tackled through a multinational approach, recognizing that global challenges need global solutions.

Working together in this Collaborative Research Action, the partner agencies have provided support to foster global transdisciplinary research teams to address critical issues in ocean sustainability including, conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development. This complex challenge required that the projects utilized integrated, transdisciplinary and cross-sectoral approaches and bring together natural and social sciences as well as policymakers, resource managers, industries, citizens and other societal partners.

This award provides support for the U.S. researchers to cooperate in consortia that consist of partners from at least three of the participating countries to increase our knowledge of the complex linkages and pathways needed to accelerate sustainable use of oceans and minimize the effects from global change.

The project focuses on developing a model to sustainably culture and harvest cone snails. Toxins of cone snails are an important source of pharmaceuticals for treating human health and may have other significant molecular properties with diverse applications. The potential benefits and uses of cone derived pharmaceuticals are evident in current clinical trials and the approval of one cone derived pain medication.

This project will focus on French Polynesia and seeks to provide critical information to help communities develop integrated, ethical, and sustainable harvesting and aquaculture practices. The project will develop a model for the maintenance and enhancement of the sustainable wellbeing of these communities and their linked marine environments and ecologies through an integrated approach to developing new blue economics including significant advances in its aquaculture and venom exploitation processes.

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.