WAMAS Fall Meeting - October 5, 2024 - Mike Henley (Saturday)

[Gatortailale]

Event: WAMAS Fall 2024 Meeting
Saturday October 5, 2024
Time: 1:30 PM - 4:45 PM (Speaker starts at 3:00 PM)
Where: North Bethesda Middle School, 8935 Bradmoor Drive, Bethesda, MD 20817

WAMAS members get in free. Guests are $5 each (paid at the door). Join WAMAS at this link.

Agenda:
1:30 Sign-in / socialize / frag sales
2:45 Club business
3:00 Speaker - Mike Henley, Fellow, Center for Species Survival, Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute
4:00 Break
4:15 Raffle!
Directions to North Bethesda Middle School:
- NOTE: The school is just inside the north edge of the beltway near Old Georgetown Road.

Here's a map from Google Maps:
https://goo.gl/maps/bKz79Y9HmQF2


(Pictured: left- Mike Henley; right John Coppolino, WAMAS Speaker Coordinator)

Mike is a WAMAS member who has a distinguished career working at the Smithsonian's National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute. He is currently a Fellow with their Center for Species Survival, based in Hawaii. Mike also work several years in the Invertebrate House at the National Zoo in DC, where he was part of team of scientists and researchers working in the SECORE program. SECORE stands for SExual COral REproduction, which refers to SECORE's Coral Seeding approach for reef restoration: taking advantage of the corals’ own reproduction potential to develop scalable methods and technologies. Breeding corals from collected coral spawn allows SECORE to produce huge numbers of baby corals out of one spawning event while at the same time supporting genetic diversity and consequently promoting reef resilience.

Special thanks to theses sponsors. Please support them & say thanks next time you shop with them. You can find their website address by visiting their forum or the sponsor page on the WAMAS website.

WAMAS Platinum Sponsors
- Air, Water & Ice
- Avast Marine
- Blue Ribbon Koi
- Capital Exotic Fish
- ChemiPure (Boyd Enterprises)
- Coral Magazine
- Exotic Reef Creations
- Frank's Tanks
- Maxspect
- Puddle Aquatics
- Reed Mariculture (Reef Nutrition)
- Reef eScape
- Supreme Reefs

WAMAS Banner-Only Sponsors
- Bulk Reef Supply
- Cobalt Aquatics
- Coral Candy Aquaculture
- Jellyfish Art
- MASNA
- Two Little Fishies

 

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Talk: Cryopreservation of coral microfragments

ABSTRACT: Corals are under siege by both local and global threats, creating a worldwide reef crisis. The loss of species and genetic diversity has stimulated an interest in reef conservation methods such as marine protected areas, oceanic coral nurseries, and land-based repositories in aquaria and aquaculture facilities. Additionally, advances in cryopreservation have allowed for the emergence of “cryoconservation” wherein live, cryopreserved cells (coral sperm) from reefs in the Caribbean and Pacific are secured in gene banks as insurance against loss of genetic diversity; this material has also been used for assisted gene flow, and more recently, live coral larvae have been successfully cryopreserved. Cryopreservation is an important intervention measure and a vital component of the modern conservation toolkit, but preservation techniques are currently limited to sensitive reproductive materials that can only be obtained a few nights per year during spawning. These annual spawning events provide limited opportunities to secure genetic diversity, and reproductive material is increasingly negatively impacted by ecosystem stressors. Coral asexual reproduction via fragmentation allows for cryopreservation of the whole coral organism (and genome) and decouples the process from yearly reproductive events. Here we use a novel technique, isochoric vitrification, to cryopreserve and revive small (1 cm2) coral “microfragments” and use oxygen-uptake respirometry to determine 24-hr post-thaw survival. Immediate next steps are currently exploring techniques to allow for the continued survival of fragments beyond this initial benchmark and new combinations of cryoprotectants that allow for vitrification at temperatures higher than the liquid nitrogen standard. These findings are paving the way towards an approach that can be rapidly deployed around the world to secure the biological genetic diversity of our vanishing coral reefs.

see www.wamas.org for latest updates

 

[Gatortailale]

Raffle Prizes update:

• $100 Gift Certificate for Reef Nutrition products (with $40 bump-up for shipping)
• $50 Gift Certificate for Reef Nutrition products (with $40 bump-up for shipping). (2 chances to win!)
• The Plank Autofeeder from Avast Marine + Avast food pack. $239 value. 1 chance to win!
• Two Little Fishies C-Balance (2x1-gallon bottles) $60 value. 1 chance to win!
• $100 Gift Card for Capital Exotic Fish. 1 chance to win!
• Chemi-pure Blue nano - 15 pack by Boyd Enterprises. 5 chances to win!
• Julian's Thing & Gonipower (1 oz) donated by Two Little Fishies. 1 chance to win!
• TLF PouchFeeder & Sea Veggies [1x bulk (100 sheet), 1x purple (30g), & 1x green (30g)] donated by Two Little Fishies. 1 chance to win!
• Single head of Pink & Blue tipped Torch from Blue Ribbon Koi. Value $200. 1 chance to win!
• 1 Blueline LED Refractometer donated by BluelineAquatics.com & 1 AccuraSea Calibration Solution (250ml) donated by TLF. $95 value. 1 chance to win!
• 1 Frag Bag & Frag Tools (1-Bone Cutter, 1 SPS Clipper, 1 precision tweezer) donated by Champion Lighting & Supply. $55 value. 1 chances to win!
• 32" Blueline Reef Tong & 12" precision tweezer, donated by Champion Lighting & Supply. $50 value. 1 chance to win!
• 1-DI Resin, (1.25lb), 1- Citric Acid (1.5lb), 1-Carbon (12oz), donated by Champion Lighting & Supply. $50 value. 1 chance to win!