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Scientists Cryo-Freeze Coral Reef
An anonymous reader writes "Due to rising ocean temperatures, scientists from the United States and Australia are attempting to freeze coral eggs and sperm in cryogenic suspension so that the endangered species can be preserved. Once frozen, the species may later be grown in a lab and implanted in reefs. This could be the only way to ensure the survival of certain endangered species at The Great Barrier Reef."
Huh. I always thought coral was more like plants than animals. Anyone here a coral expert or should I check out them wikipedias?
Sure be nice if we could work on freezing entire human beings this same way. Maybe humanity as a species isn't endangered, but "natural" death means that every human being alive today will be gone within slightly over a century, gone like they never existed in the first place. You could view this as extinction of all of humanity and replacing it with a new population.
This, by the way, is the reason so many of us believe religious fairy tales. Because if we let those stories go..acknowledge that the most accurate view of the world is based on empirical evidence...then we know that when we die, it's oblivion forever like we never lived in the first place.
It won't make much difference if the oceans are acidified to the point that calcification is impossible.
I live near the Great Barrier Reef in Australia. It's bleached. Dead. Its one of the saddest things I have ever seen. Lots of tourists coming over asking where the "colorful" reef is, like in the brochure. I reply "oh, like in the 80's? Your 30 years too late". If you want proof of global warming / ocean acidification, look no further.
Well maybe not too late, but just in time.
The news clip broadcasted last evening on ABC.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Enabling the future human race to re-populate the ocean. :)
Now we just have to do the same for all the other endangered species in the world
This could be the only way to ensure the survival of certain endangered species...
Or, you know, we could clean up our act and treat the earth better. I'm pretty sure that one of the species that is going to be endangered is us if we don't.
For the love of the planet, release that new Dutch H5N1 super virus now!
And just like that we've got a wonderful outline for a sequel to Finding Nemo, as they try to recover coral eggs that the humans have stolen. :)
there is a human virus out there already which leaves a significant number of men sterile and it wasn't fatal.. I totally forget its name... Somebody needs to mix that with the common cold! That would help everybody a lot and its random nature would be more fair than trying to implement any restraints on selfish procreation that has been going rampant for far too long. We should never exceed 1 billion people. ever. that might be too high; too many of us work at stupid jobs that actually do nothing for humankind and robotics + AI will remove even more jobs. The whole economic religion we have can't continue forever.
sounds yummy... like the astronaut food they sell at the Smithsonian.
Yes, it might not be a good plan, but freezing and storing animals is cheap, so why not freeze them just in case?
This is what we need: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_monkeys
In "Coral Reef" flavor.
If we can convince a private company to produce coral versions of these we're all set. The company can profit from the sales as novelty items for kids with short attention spans. And scientists can just empty a packet into a fish bowl of water whenever needed.
Win-Win all around.
We might need to do a bit of work on the lifespan issue, though.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Where the hell are we going to 'plant' these things after ruin the reefs that exist...
Save some now so we can destroy the reef and then fix it and THEN replant... Instead of um... idk.. just not fucking up the reef in the first place?
I think i see a wasted step here...
So, they are actually killing them to help "prevent extinction"?
Responsible for superheating the ionosphere and raising the earth's ambient temperatures globally should be high on the list of someone in a position of AUTHORITY if we have any hope of stopping this madness. Flipflopping the magnetosphere, creating disastrous weather, causing earthquakes and everything else under the sun is trumping every good scientific experiment out there. WTF is the matter with you MFs?
That the coral was frozen while trying to deliver a pizza to I. C. Weiner .
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Aren't corals one of the oldest lifeforms on the planet? As far as I recall, they've survived at least a couple of the 'great extinctions' - so as a widespread species they're at least 200 million years old. I know they're found abundantly in fossils at least 100 million years old.
And within that last 200 million years, the earth has been (both) substantially warmer and colder for long periods of time, as well as strikingly quick changes of several degrees in both directions (fast enough to appear as 'instant' in a climatological scale - otherwise comparable to the current shift). So clearly they can survive both large and quick changes.
So how is it that they're so desperately endangered? Is it that "corals" are at risk (as the news stories say) or is it that THESE corals are at risk but there are other places that were formerly unfavorable to corals that are now optimal?
I am not a coral scientist, so if someone could explain, that would be great.
-Styopa
If the oceans degenerate to the point where no coral is left we are going to have bigger problems than "think of the coral". Valiant effort, yes, however I wish Science/People would focus on addressing the bigger problem; the reason the ocean is warming in the first place.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
Maybe its too early for me, or I haven't had enough coffee.
But why bother?
Don't species go extinct? Just because? Isn't that how nature works?
Granted, you could go on about humans and their behaviour being the cause and
that somehow we are responsible for correcting it.
I don't think so.
The planet will correct itself and all will be good, it's just that we will be all dead and forgotten by the time that happens...
It should be noted that at one point, it was commonplace to throw your personal waste into the street. I'm sure that there were plenty who thought that the taxes levied for building sewers were an injustice too.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
From coral to rhinos, ensure you can grow it outside its original environment.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
So this really makes you Fascist Eco Nazi's
It is SO adorable the way Republicans use big words they've heard adults say, even though they have no idea what they mean.
We've destabilized the climate and destroyed a lot of the coral habitats owing in great part to their temperature sensitivity. Seeing as they're a key species for providing habitat to whole ecosystems, I have this really odd idea. What if we selectively breed or modify coral species for greater resilience to these hostile conditions, and reintroduce them to hold onto reefs that are otherwise lost?
These are methods usually associated with liquidation of environmental capital. They should totally give you pause while you reflect on the number of things done wrong with that kind of meddling. I think that it's worth considering, though.
Bre Pettis and his over-priced stolen design will 3D print brand new coral reef. Duh, slashdot, the future is here!
It is not confined to a planet, no one said it was. We are still "in it", part of the nature. If we as a species die, then natural selection wiped us out because we were unfit or unlucky.
Now, unlike other animals, we think we can choose our own future. Because of that, we cryofreeze corals, for example.
Natural selection is coming for us and we fight back. That's all there is to it.
All of that coral on the planet Earth (yes, all of it) is less than 10,000 years old. All of the coral that was alive 20,000 years ago died when the last ice age ended and the ocean levels changed by > 400ft. All of the Earth's previous coral died as it was too deep to survive the new depths. In the past 1,000,000 years such events have wiped all tropical coral from existence at lest 20 times.
Coral has adapted by loading the ocean up with the eggs and sperm so it can form wherever conditions are correct. This falls into the publicity stunt range of science. They got funding for something they know isn't a problem, but they get money for it anyway.
No, If you look it wasn't taxes. It was people getting hit with it that used their personal weapons. Its was royalty and police scaring the hell out of people when they got hit and generally the foul stench that let to its stoppage.
"NASA and the U.S. Solar Observatory has said to expect moderate global cooling for the next three decades due to a quiet period on the sun, and a consequent cooling of the Pacific Ocean’s huge heat mass." http://junkscience.com/2011/11/22/earths-embarrassing-lack-of-warming-since-1998/
During the last ice age, the ocean levels dropped ~40 meters and has since risen to its current level. If the coral reefs can withstand that change, it can withstand the changes whatever small changes we got in the past decades.
So much tech, so many minds involved in trying to save the World when all we really need to do is admit we circumvented Mothers checks and balances with our medicine and technology and agree that we need World wide population reduction immediately, now, not tomorrow.
Just grow up and admit we are the plague of locust, we are the problem, the 7 billion ignorant, greedy animals sucking the planet dry.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
How ironic that we are at risk of losing corals, and at the same time we are threatened by hordes of their close relatives, the jellyfish. http://www.eurocbc.org/page727.html just for starters.
If one runs current though the coral, it grows better. http://reefbuilders.com/2011/09/02/coral-ark-electrified-artificial-reefs/
Wind machines can have their ocean floor mooring points become the basis for a reef and give up part of their electricity to making a reef.
(and such has been proposed on land for plants. http://www.rexresearch.com/ has an entire electro culture section for one to attempt to figure out the wheat from the pile of chaff )