Field expedition Puerto Rico, August 2009

	Under the lead of Mary Hagedorn, expert in coral cryopreservation and member of the SECORE Science Board, a group of researchers and scientists went this year for the forth time to Puerto Rico to work jointly on the conservation of the endangered Elkhorn coral. During the annual mass coral spawning, gametes were collected, fertlized in the lab and then basically used for different purposes.
For the first time, Mary's group managed to fertilize fresh eggs with cryopreserved sperm. This novelty will be another stepping stone towards building a back up for endangered corals in cryo banks for the future. We transported again cryopreserved sperm to several cryo banks in the USA and the Netherlands. Although spawning was less compared to other years, we could manage to transport larvae back to the participating public aquaria.
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Participants of the SECORE Field Expedition Puerto Rico 2009:   Mary Hagedorn, Smithsonian Institution, DC Virginia Carter, Smithsonian Institution, DC Mike Henley, Smithsonian Institution, DC Jason Acker, University of Alberta, Canada Rafael Uribe, Louisiana State University, LA Megan McCarthy, UC Davis, CA Eric Borneman, University of Houston, TX Brian Nelson, New England Aquarium, MA Michael Byers, General BioTechnology
The SECORE Field Expedition Puerto Rico 2009 has been sponsored by