1.2 million tonnes of coral may have been illegally extracted from reefs located near Malaysia’s protected Semporna Islands Park.

State Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Datuk Masidi Manjum has formed a committee that will investigate the allegations made by former state Social Services Minister Datuk Kong Hong Ming.

According to the former minister, corals have been extracted for 10 years by a certain group under the pretext of dredging sea sand. The corals have then been ground up and the powder sold to medical and pharmaceutical companies to be used for bone surgery, dentistry and drugs. Kong Hong Ming also said that he has visited an area in Tawau where 1,000 tonnes of corals were stored and that all corals were moved two days after his visit.

Manjum has now given the committee, headed by his minister Deputy Permanent

Secretary William Bayo, three weeks to wrap up its investigation.

“This is a very serious matter. I do not want to prejudice the probe by saying any more about it,” Masidi said Thursday.

Semporna Islands Park, also known as the Tun Sakaran Marine Park, is home to one of the nation’s prime coral reefs and the surrounding area is also very rich in biodiversity.

A Taiwan research team has successfully extracted a brain-boosting nutrient from squid skin, according to an announcement made by the Council of Agriculture’s Fisheries Research Institute.

The nutrient in question is phospholipid docosahexaenoic acid, commonly known as PL-DHA, a substance known to improve a persons memory and enhance learning ability.

According to the institute official, PL-DHA is superior to TG-DHA another form of docosahexaenoic acid commonly found in deep-sea fish oil — when it comes to inhibiting degradation of the intellect since PL-DHA can cross the blood brain barrier and be absorbed directly by the brain.

Researchers at the institute have also showed that PL-DHA is effective in reviving neural cells and enhancing the content of three oxidation-resistant enzymes — GSH, CAT and SOD. In addition to this, the fatty acid will moderate the oxidative damage to neural cells that can be induced by free radicals in the body, which means that it will decrease the pace of plaque and tangle accumulation in brain cells.

Quoting medical reports, the institute official stressed that Alzheimer’s and other forms of senile dementia is known to be associated with the accumulation of plaque and tangles in the brain.