Bioengineering Approaches to Preserving Coral Reefs
Channel: HMS Center for Bioethics
Date: 2022-02-23

Coral reefs provide fundamental ecosystems services - from feeding us, to protecting our homes and cities, to providing substantial global economic benefits. Yet coral reefs are under siege around the world. 
 
Mary Hagedorn works to conserve the biodiversity and genetic diversity of coral by using a wide array of human fertility techniques to cryopreserve their sperm, larvae, symbionts, and small fragments. She and her colleagues have deployed these novel approaches to creating new coral to help restore coral reefs by producing thousands of new coral genotypes with potentially helpful resiliency for Florida reefs. Unfortunately, their newly engineered corals have sat in limbo in captivity for 3 years while managers discuss the merits and challenges of allowing these fragments to be placed back into the water. Dr. Insoo Hyun and Dr. Hagedorn will take the audience through an interactive discussion of how Dr. Hagedorn's experiments highlight the ability of science to produce potential solutions to climate change issues, while at the same time underscoring how local stakeholders may resist embracing these potential solutions.

Presented by
Mary Hagedorn, PhD
Senior Research Scientist, Smithsonian Conservation Biology Institute
Director, Reef Recovery Initiative

Moderated by:
Insoo Hyun, PhD

This session is part of the Ethics in Research and Biotechnology Consortium.  Learn more about the series at https://bioethics.hms.harvard.edu/events/weekly-consortia/ethics-research-and-biotechnology