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MAF scientists scratch the ocean's surface

From AnimalNews 8.4

Wooed by corals' beautiful colors, some people may overlook the important role of coral as a place that houses many marine species and acts as a natural coastal storm barrier. Not so for scientist Dr. Mary Hagedorn, a physiologist at the Smithsonian Institution who is pioneering successful conservation tools.

An organism that represents one of the oldest, most diverse ecosystems on the planet, coral are dying all over the world and scientists have a limited window in which to help save them.

"Human actions are causing the demise of the coral ecosystems," says Hagedorn, who conducts most of her  research, including that funded by Morris Animal Foundation, in the Trés Palmas Reserve in Puerto Rico.

Since the mid-1980s Elkhorn reef coral populations in the Caribbean have seen a 90 to 99 percent decline. To stem the tide of erosion, Hagedorn's team embarked twice on missions to artificially inseminate sagging coral communities and investigate ways to freeze the sperm of coral. This year they took about 100 samples of A. palmata sperm and used modern fertility preservation techniques to store sperm in genome banks around the world.

Reintroduction efforts with larvae reared in tanks in the reserve in 2008—tagged as the Year of the Reef—are also underway. Recognizing that they will be lucky to see a small percentage of viable juveniles from their efforts, success is within reach,  Hagedorn says.

Her MAF-funded research will be completed in 2010, and in addition to acting as a reservoir to re-seed coral populations, gene banks may aid with future infectious disease research. The hope is that these groundbreaking studies will help to save these ecologically critical species.

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