{"id":6308,"date":"2012-07-29T08:00:16","date_gmt":"2012-07-29T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/?p=6308"},"modified":"2012-08-27T12:57:01","modified_gmt":"2012-08-27T16:57:01","slug":"sperm-banking-coral-reefs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/inbox\/2012\/07\/29\/sperm-banking-coral-reefs\/","title":{"rendered":"Sperm banking coral reefs"},"content":{"rendered":"

A good many years ago on Car Talk, Tom and Ray got around to the part where they ask what the caller does for a living. The woman in question replied that she did field biology, or environmental science – something like that. The hosts asked what that was like. She said it tended to be depressing. On the whole, she felt like all she did was “document the decline”.<\/p>\n

I’m sure that caller didn’t invent the concept. But it was the first time I’d heard the depressing state of so many plants, animals and ecosystems summed up in three short words.<\/p>\n

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The Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology lab is on Coconut Island in Kaneohe Bay<\/p><\/div>\n

Which leads me to a recent news tidbit, courtesy of this article<\/a> in the New York Times, by Michelle Nijhuis<\/a> about efforts to establish a sperm bank for coral reefs.<\/p>\n

You may well wonder what that has to do with the North Country. Not much – apart from how important healthy oceans are to all life on this planet.<\/p>\n

The article caught my eye because some of the work is being done in my home state of Hawaii. And because it sounds quirky and cool. (“Fascinating” as Mr. Spock liked to say.)<\/p>\n

Many readers know about seed saving<\/a> organizations, about sperm banks for human and animal applications and about the ark-like frozen vaults in Norway that store thousands of seeds in case that’s needed some day. (Read more about the Svalbard Global Seed Vault here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

But a sperm bank for coral? How does that work?<\/p>\n

With labs at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology<\/a> in Kaneohe Bay,\u00a0a reproductive physiologist with the Smithsonian Institution, Dr. Mary Hagedorn, is a pioneer in gathering reproductive material from corals in Hawaii, the Caribbean and Australia. Coral can reproduce asexually or sexually. But sexual reproduction offers more genetic diversity and the best chance to adapt to environmental changes.<\/p>\n

Here is a video by Hagedorn on the subject:
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