KARACHI, Nov 21: The International Centre for Chemical and Biological Science, University of Karachi, plans to prepare baseline data about chemical quality of coastal water and properties of marine resources along the Arabian Sea.

For this purpose, the ICCBS will be making a marine sample collection centre functional in one-and-a-half years on a seaside plot acquired from the Karachi Port Trust on a 20-year lease.

Briefing newsmen on the project, the acting director of the ICCBS, Dr Muhammad Iqbal Choudhary, said on Tuesday that the marine sample collection centre, having the relevant scientific facilities, manned by a limited number of research officers and other staffers would mainly work as a place for collection, preservation and extraction of marine species and vertebrates available in the coastal water, mangroves and other marine flora and fauna.

Samples collected by the proposed centres would finally be shifted to the HEJ Research Institute of Chemistry, University of Karachi, which will work as a satellite laboratory of the marine centre, he added, saying that the full-fledged centre would cost about Rs12 million.

He said the construction of the centre had already been started. In addition to conventional means, divers will also be used for the collection of samples, but the ICCBS has no intention to undertake any deep-sea scientific activities as it requires big arrangements, including navigation vessels.

He said the purpose of the setting up of the centre was to have some scientific studies of marine life, mangroves and animals from chemical aspects and have comprehensive reports about marine resources, the large base of organisms which has not been fully tapped.

He was of the view that scientists had been working on physical and biological properties of marine life, but that too remained mostly fragmented. There was a need for integrated approaches towards a true exploitation of resources available from the sea, he remarked.

Emphasising on chemical study of coastal water, he said health of coastal species significantly related to the quality of coastal water and he thought that it was high time to go for the chemical assessment of the water. The unabated disposal of waste and sewerage to the sea had surely been a threat to marine habitat and aquatic life but “we don’t have any baseline data or assessment procedure”, he added.

Dr Choudhary also referred to the availability of marine forest in the Arabian Sea and held that the Pakistan coast had the fifth largest mangroves forests in the world, which could be used chemically for earning valuable foreign exchange.