04-01-2011
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Senior Slacker
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Join Date: Feb 2010
Location: SoCal
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I've never seen any good evidence that pepper works, but I've never seen any really well-designed experiments to test it either. I would think that if one were to find a natural product that really worked as an antifouling agent, it would be derived from a marine organism, rather than a terrestrial one. However, almost all marine organisms that bother to defend themselves against fouling do so with mechanical action and/or lots of mucus (in other words, scrubbing the bottom of your boat, or having it scrubbed, essentially mimics what marine critters do). The critters using chemical means to defend their space are usually pretty tuned into a very small number of competitors (mainly conspecifics at that), rather than a broad spectrum of other fouling species.
Also, I find it hard to believe that any naturally produced organic compound (in the chemical sense of the term) would last very long on a submerged surface anyway; there are just too many microbes in sea water waiting to munch any food source that comes along.
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Last edited by SlowButSteady; 04-01-2011 at 10:02 PM.
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