Yesterday a great op-ed piece on coral appeared in The New York Times. SCBIs own coral scientist Dr. Mary Hagedorn has this to add: I applaud Jackson and Johnson’s Op-Ed piece. We should not merely sit back and write epitaphs for our coral reefs. Problems arise when human interests oppose their sage conservation advice for coral, and slow down political and educational processes. One of our major reef problems is the over-abundance of both local and global stressors, allowing events like warming or a disease outbreak to have disastrous consequences to the populations. At the Smithsonian, we are working with international colleagues on a hi-tech solution to ‘freeze the reef’ by putting germplasm and stem cells of coral, sea urchins, algae and fish into biorepositories worldwide. These biorepositories hold great promise because they can maintain genetic diversity and prevent extinctions, thereby expiating both local and global issues. This type solution has the advantage of giving humans time because the cells can wait without DNA degradation in liquid nitrogen for hundreds of years. --Dr. Mary Hagedorn. Read the op-ed: nytimes/2014/09/18/opinion/we-can-save-coral-reefs.html?_r=0 Photos: Abby Wood/Smithsonians National Zoo
Posted on: Fri, 19 Sep 2014 19:36:02 +0000
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