Caribbean coral among those to be preserved by freezing

The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is planning to freeze hundreds of samples of coral, including those from Caribbean waters, allowing them to be rebuilt if they are destroyed as researchers predict they will be in a few decades, according to a report on www.caribbean360.com.



Corals are facing destruction from rising greenhouse gas levels and research shows that most reefs will be mostly dead by 2040.



\"Carbon dioxide emissions are rising fast and are already above the safe level for corals,\" said head of marine biodiversity at the ZSL, Dr Alex Rogers.



\"Some reefs are already beginning to fail and many will die within a few decades. We need a plan B, and freezing them is the best option.\"



The first global \"coral cryobank\", to be housed at Whipsnade zoo in Bedfordshire, will see samples from each species stored in liquid nitrogen.



Craig Downs, of the Haereticus Environmental Laboratory, is working with the ZSL on the project.



\"We can take 1mm-2mm biopsies from coral, freeze them at -200C and thaw them out to regenerate back into a polyp,\" he explained. \"We are proposing to do this for every species of coral on the planet.\"



He has proposed that 1,000 samples of each 1,800 known tropical corals and another 3,350 cold-water species be kept.