Researchers have achieved a breakthrough in the fight to save the world’s coral reefs from climate change annihilation.
Researchers have achieved a breakthrough in the fight to save the world’s coral reefs from climate change annihilation. In a paper published in Nature Communications, lead authors E. Michael Henley and Mary Hagedorn, research biologists at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB), and other co-authors describe the first successful technique for cryopreserving (preserving samples using cold temperatures) and reviving entire coral fragments.
This milestone was conducted in Kāneʻohe Bay at HIMB and heralds a new age for cryopreservation and coral conservation because the coral fragments contain tens of thousands of cells and are among the most complex biological systems ever successfully ushered through the cryopreservation and thawing process. This proof-of-concept opens the door to collecting and preserving coral fragments easily and rapidly at an urgent moment for coral worldwide.
“This process holds enormous promise to conserve the biodiversity and genetic diversity of coral,” said Hagedorn, who is also a senior research scientist at Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute (NZCBI). “If we can scale this up and refine the post-thaw husbandry [care and cultivation of coral], we will be able to work year-round rather than just a few days during spawning seasons. If we can do that, this will be a really viable process that changes how we see the security of corals going forward.”
Read more at University of Hawaii at Manoa
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