Gordon Sato, a cell biologist and Japanese-American World War II internment camp survivor, has spent much of his career helping to
relieve poverty and hunger in the East African nation of Eritrea with innovative seawater agriculture projects.

He was visiting Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory on Tuesday, and he will give a public talk about his work tonight.

"We've got to make the people self-sufficient," he said in an interview. "It's not enough to give them aid. Unfortunately, the musical concerts right now are a temporary fix, not a long-lasting fix."

Sato sees opportunity in the saltwater visible off MDI's shores - where others might see only gently lapping waves.

According to Sato, 77, his past has influenced his hopes.

"We were living essentially in concentration camps, and the food was very bad," he said of his 1940s internment camp experience. "That's probably the impetus of what I'm doing now. ... I have sympathy for people who are suffering hardship, as Eritreans were and are."

When Sato arrived in Eritrea in 1987, he found a country of impoverished fishermen and goat herders reeling under the Ethiopian government's harsh strictures. The country of 4.5 million in East Africa borders Ethiopia.

"My concern was for the economic development of Eritrea, one of the poorest countries in the world," he said.

Rather than limit himself to helping Western nations ship surplus corn to the nation devastated by drought, war and famine, he decided to work on a project that could become self-perpetuating.

His vision, to grow mangrove trees along the desert shores of Eritrea, uses basic science to help the country feed itself.

When researching how to grow mangrove trees with sea water, Sato discovered that farmers needed to add nitrogen, phosphorus and iron to the water.

The scientist found a simple, cheap solution: Eritrean farmers fill a plastic bag with fertilizer, seal it, punch three holes in it, and bury it near the ocean. "This ensures that fertilizer will only exit fast enough to feed the trees," he said.

Leaves and seeds from the mangrove trees are dried and used, along with small amounts of high-protein fish meal, to feed herds of sheep and goats. Sato is working in partnership with Eritrean villagers on the project.

"We have villagers who know what needs to be done and can do it themselves," he said. "My next step is to increase the herd size to a couple thousand, to give individual people in the village their own startup herd."

Sato's idea has won him the 2002 Rolex Award and the 2005 Blue Planet Prize, a $500,000 international prize for outstanding achievement in scientific research on global environmental problems. He has put the prize money back into the Eritrean project, he said.

"It's all simple science, but it's new," he said. "In fact, I think my biggest accomplishment will be to be unnecessary."

Sato will give a talk on his Eritrean agriculture project at 8 p.m. tonight in the Maren Auditorium of the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory.