Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation

This capstone project explores whether the sustainable collection and research of marine natural products can contribute to marine conservation, using the small island nation of Curacao as a case study. Research was conducted on various perspectives on natural products discovery, also known and “bioprospecting”, and explored what has caused both positive and negative perceptions. Work was conducted with Sirenas, a small natural products discovery startup, Their collection model is to make sustainable collections by hand to mimic natural predation on collection organisms, and sensitive or threatened organism are always excluded from collections. Previous collaboration between Sirenas and the ocean communities in which they have made collections culminated in the Sirenas “Explorer Network”, which has membership benefits designed to promote marine conservation. Part of this project included expanding the benefits of the Explorer Network to include access to an interactive oceanographic database where members may access, provide, and utilize ocean data.