The arid plains fringing Australia’s desert center are more suited to camels than blooms of coral, but here, hundreds of kilometers from the coast, a piece of the Great Barrier Reef has been put on ice.
Suspended in a liquid nitrogen chamber at minus-196 ?C, the 70 billion sperm and 22 billion coral embryos are part of an ambitious Australian-first project to preserve and perhaps one day regenerate the world-famous reef.
“We know the Great Barrier Reef is in deep, deep trouble because of a number of different things — global threats including climate change and acidification of waters as well as the warming of waters,” said Rebecca Spindler, the project’s director.
“We will never have as much genetic diversity again as we do right now on the reef, this is our last opportunity to save as much as we possibly can,” she said
Spindler’s team is working with Hawaii-based Mary Hagedorn from the Smithsonian Institute to collect and freeze samples from the World Heritage-listed reef, a sprawling and vivid natural wonder visible from space.
In order to maximize the amount of reproductive cells — gametes — collected the team cut away sections of the reef and took them back to land-based tanks to spawn, an event that only occurs for three days a year.
Experts from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, a major partner in the research, then tagged the reef sections and returned them to Orpheus Island, literally gluing them back to their original sites.
They plan to build up a catalogue of coral species as insurance against increasing bleaching linked to ocean warming and acidification and threats including chemical run-off, dredging and damage from cyclones and floods.
Eventually Spindler hopes to grow in-vitro reefs that can be used to reseed wild populations — something she is “confident” will be possible in a few years time. Experts at Dubbo’s Western Plains Zoo, Australia’s top wildlife reproductive lab, keep the frozen reef ticking over with regular liquid nitrogen top-ups while they explore optimal conditions for reviving and mating the coral.
Some 400km inland from the coast and far closer to desert than ocean, Dubbo seems an unlikely location for marine research. Giraffes, rhinos and elephants roam the 300-hectare zoo and the lab, which backs onto a mating enclosure for the endangered Tasmanian devil, is a hive of hormonal experiments using animal droppings and urine.
Spermologist Nana Satake did her doctorate in pig reproduction and usually works with African and native animals, but she sees the Reef Recovery Project as an exciting challenge.
“The Great Barrier Reef is really a bit of an enigma — there’s very little [research been] done on coral reef production from [its] coral species,” Satake said, describing it as the “rainforest of the ocean.”
“Coral is one of the most unique species of the world, really of any organism, because they actually have all types of reproduction — they can reproduce asexually and sexually,” she said.
Once more had been learned from this initial round of samples, taken from two foundational types of coral, Satake said work could be done on more endangered species.
Spindler said Australia’s corals had so far dodged the kind of damage from climate change, disease and human impacts seen in the world’s other reefs but described the next few years as critical, with some species already feared lost.
“We’ve had a little bit [of damage], but really just a taste, and I think the next five years are going to be incredibly important in terms of maintaining the health of the reef and capturing as much of that genetic diversity as we possibly can,” she said.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese