Coral sperm bank

Researchers say a sperm bank for corals, collected from coral reefs in Hawaii, the Caribbean and Australia , could one day help restore and regenerate reefs harm.

>>>The area of ​​global coral is shrinking too fast

Coral bleached

According to The New York Times , expert Mary Hagedorn of the Hawaii Marine Biology Institute has a unique collection with 1,000 billion coral sperms, enough to fertilize 500 million - 1 billion eggs.

Corals can reproduce asexually, because coral fragments can develop into clones of their parents.

The ocean is getting hotter, making corals more susceptible to disease and especially coral bleaching, the condition of coral expelling symbiotic algae, becoming white and slowly dying.

If ocean warming, bleaching and ocean acidification due to the increase in carbon dioxide levels continue to last, most of the world's coral reefs will die in 2050, researchers said.

According to experts, that scenario makes Hegedorn's collection very important and necessary.