Letters to the Editor

+ Mote expansion seems less research based
Dear Editor:
Thank you, Observer, for the extensive Aug. 21 report on Mote Marine seeking public and private funding to build an ambitious new facility next to the Van Wezel to attract greater numbers of visitors to its exhibits. I remember it and became an ardent admirer of their work when it was a tiny, modest facility next to Midnight Pass back in the 1970s, studying the reason sharks, unlike humans, do not get cancer and searching for a cure.

By now, it seems Mote has gradually become less of the strictly scientific research lab it used to be and more of an income-generating, tourist-theme park enterprise. By now, it even produces and markets, of all things, its own brand of … caviar. From the analytical charts printed in the Observer it appears Mote might be concerned less with science and more with numbers of tourist “annual attendance” and numbers of dollars of “annual earned revenue potential,” “annual net income,” “annual operating expenses,” etc.

For decades, expanding Mote’s scientific research capability has been the purpose touted for fundraising, including cancer or red tide prevention. For example, a multimillion-dollar federal grant, secured with the help of Washington, D.C., politicians probably seeking the environmentalists’ vote, was used in purchasing six expensive submarine “unmanned underwater craft” for closer observation of the lives of red tide algae.

Several decades of fundraising have now passed as endless observing, studying and analyzing continue seemingly forever. Yet, we still haven’t seen much research findings or many useful answers. Research should not be an end in itself. Research should be a means to an end, and that end should be solutions to problems. Let us hope we may soon see some concrete results, perhaps a cancer cure, as I happen to be myself a cancer patient.
Nick Catsakis
Nokomis