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Copenhagen and Coral Cryopreservation
by Mary Hagedorn on December 3rd, 2009
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The Copenhagen Climate Change meetings will be starting Dec 9th. There will be a great deal of discussion about coral at this meeting. Why? Because during this meeting many of the nations will decide what are acceptable targets for greenhouse gas emissions (mostly CO2). The current wisdom is that many nations may settle on 450 parts per million (ppm) as an acceptable limit for CO2, but they may want a limit higher than this. An acceptable level of CO2 for healthy coral is ~350 parts per million (ppm). The current global level of carbon dioxide is at ~384 ppm. Atmospheric CO2 levels of ~450 ppm will not support the growth of coral reefs. At ~560 ppm, all coral reefs will cease to grow and start to dissolve. Many coral scientists have sent a letter to the Copenhagen meeting stating that levels at or above 450 ppm of CO2 are unacceptable. Main author, Dr. Charlie Veron, former Chief Scientist of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, states that if these levels persist, "By mid-century, all shallow-water corals will have been wiped out by mass bleaching and by mid-century ocean acidification will be slowing or stopping the growth of corals on the Great Barrier Reef. Reef growth will have ceased."
Although I have never met Dr. Veron, I decided to write to him about our coral cryopreservation work, and how it might relate to the upcoming Copenhagen meetings. I wrote, "Like you, I believe that the best way to preserve species is in the wild, but that does not always work out no matter how much we as scientists may care and work to save species. Therefore, I wanted to create an insurance population for the coral, and I think we are getting there-slowly. My background is in reproductive sciences, and I have been applying human fertility techniques to coral. Right now, we have over 450 samples of frozen coral sperm from Acropora palmata in genome repositories around the world. I have used this frozen and thawed sperm to successfully fertilize fresh eggs and produce developing coral. Frozen sperm is good for diversifying shrinking populations- like some of the Acroporids in Florida, but not ideal as a broad-based conservation tool. I know many folks believe that we may find coral less sensitive to temperature and acidity (and I hope this is true) but my worry is that we are changing our environment so fast that there is little time, and certainly not enough time for adaptation. In the Caribbean the acroporid reproduction is collapsing so chances for reproductive assortment to help find resistant coral is dwindling. I wish you the best of luck as you attend the meetings. Who knows, maybe there will be a stroke of insight that will allow the attendees to see that all ecosystems on earth are intimately linked (like our finances), and it makes economic sense to err on the side of the environment."
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