At first, Mande Holford may have wanted to study snails because of their beauty. But she is part of a larger movement toward marine, or undersea, research.

David Newman directs the Natural Products Branch of America’s National Cancer Institute.

“We’ve found some absolutely fascinating chemistry.”

After years of collecting organisms on land, Mr. Newman’s team now collects only sea creatures such as sponges or corals. He says that because these creatures cannot move, they use chemicals to fight.

“I have been known to say that weapons of mass destruction are alive and well on a coral reef, if you happen to be a fellow sponge who’s trying to encroach or you’re a starfish that’s trying to eat the sponge. These are extremely toxic agents because of the dilution effect of seawater.”

For an organization looking for ways to kill cancerous cells, such powerful chemicals are an inviting weapon.

William Fenical directs the Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine at the Scripps Institute for Oceanography in California. He says that about nine kilometers underwater lies what may be an even more promising source of medicine -- mud.

“Close to seventy percent of the surface of the earth is really deep ocean mud.”

His team studies microorganisms living on the ocean floor.

“These muds contain about one billion cells in the volume of a sugar cube.”

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