In labs around the world, the ocean is being kept in jars. Some of it is alive, bubbling in flasks, while some lies frozen in liquid nitrogen. They're marine biobanks – collections of coral cells, algae, bacteria and other living materials that scientists are working to preserve before warming seas and disappearing habitats consume them.
Issued on: 27/06/2026 -
A scientist at an EMBRC marine laboratory in Spain, where researchers collect, study and preserve marine organisms for research and conservation. © EMBRC Spain/ECIMAT
By: Amanda Morrow
These aren't just collections for the future, but records of the present. Part archive and part insurance policy, biobanks are emerging as a front line of marine science, as climate change reshapes the life of the ocean faster than researchers can study it.
They also raise questions that go far beyond biology. What does it mean to preserve life in artificial environments? Who controls it once it is frozen and stored, then potentially turned into medicines or commercial products?
And can an entire ecosystem ever really be kept alive in a freezer?
“We are probably losing without knowing what we’re losing,” said Nicolas Pade, who runs the European Marine Biological Resource Centre – a network of marine laboratories and research stations stretching from Greece to Norway.
Scientists have been collecting from the natural world for centuries – from the cabinets of curiosities of early collectors to today's cryogenic freezers. But what was once about discovery is now increasingly about survival.
Pade describes laboratories filled with flasks of bubbling cultures, where tubes pump oxygen through the seawater and metal tanks of liquid nitrogen hold frozen material at temperatures cold enough to almost halt biological activity.
"It looks very much like a laboratory you would expect, except you get all these different coloured liquids that kind of almost looks like a smoothie bar," he told RFI.
Frozen libraries
The organisms growing inside laboratory bottles are alive, reproducing and, as Pade says, "constantly evolving". Over time they gradually become different from the organisms first collected in the wild.
Cryopreservation, on the other hand, Pade explained, is a way to "stop time" – preserving a specimen as it was when it left the ocean. If the life in a bottle keeps changing, researchers can no longer be certain they are studying the same organism they collected years earlier.
These collections may also hold clues to future medicines, cosmetics, manufacturing technologies and even alternatives to chemical fertilisers.
Some are strange enough to seem almost alien. Diatoms – microscopic algae that build intricate shells resembling glass – are extraordinarily light yet remarkably strong, inspiring research into new engineering materials.
Cryogenic storage containers preserve marine biological samples at ultra-low temperatures, allowing scientists to maintain living material for the future. © EMBRC
Private interests
Commercial interest is already shaping the field. In one French laboratory, a large pharmaceutical company helped set up and run a marine culture collection for decades, hunting for compounds with potential cosmetic and pharmaceutical uses.
"The problem with that sort of approach is very often it becomes proprietary," Pade said. "They don't necessarily want to share it."
The scientific challenge, however, runs deeper.
"The reality is that most organisms don't actually exist in isolation," Pade explained. "The vast majority of the microbiome exists in symbiosis. That means that they live together, they work together. They depend on each other."
Freezing a single organism captures a fragment, but not the web of relationships that keeps an ecosystem working.
"What we really should be trying to preserve are whole communities – multiple organisms existing together. And that's very, very tricky."
A scientist examines a phytoplankton culture at the EMBRC lab in Portugal. © EMBRC Portugal/ACOI Collection
'Coral IVF'
On the other side of the world, scientists are using marine biobanks not just to preserve ocean life, but to help rebuild it. Carly Randall works to restore damaged coral reefs at the Australian Institute of Marine Science in Townsville, North Queensland.
Each year she waits for the reef's annual coral spawning, when billions of eggs and sperm are released into the sea. Divers describe the spectacle as "underwater snow".
Randall's team works on what researchers informally call "coral IVF". During the spawning they collect eggs and sperm, fertilise them in the laboratory and return the young corals to damaged reefs.
"We collect the eggs and sperm, we fertilise the eggs, and then we grow those embryos out," Randall told RFI. "We then seed back on to the reef. But during that process, we also cryopreserve some of that material for later use and for preserving the biodiversity of what spawned in a particular time, in a particular place."
Acropora tenuis coral releases eggs and sperm during its annual spawning, which scientists collect to perform 'coral IVF'. AFP - AIMS
Australia opened its first frozen coral biorepository in 2012. Today it also stores material from kelp forests, oyster reefs and seagrass meadows, as marine heatwaves strip away those ecosystems.
Much of the work centres on the Great Barrier Reef, which has suffered six mass bleaching events since 2016. When ocean temperatures stay too high for too long, corals expel the algae living inside their tissues. Without them, many eventually die.
The frozen material can last "many, many years, if not decades and beyond" in a secure facility, Randall said. Some is held at minus 80C.
From archive to action
In the Caribbean, frozen coral is already helping to restore damaged reefs.
In some areas, coral populations have fallen so dramatically that the survivors are now too scattered to reproduce naturally. Scientists are stepping in, using cryopreserved sperm from one reef to fertilise eggs on another.
Researchers are also freezing the microscopic algae that live inside coral tissue and provide much of its food. Some tolerate heat better than others, making them another way of banking resilience against a warming ocean.
Australia has not reached that point. The Great Barrier Reef still retains considerable resilience, but researchers fear there is a tipping point beyond which recovery becomes far more difficult.
"The modellers are telling us that the sooner we can start deploying resilient corals on to the Great Barrier Reef, the better chance we'll have to maintain the health of the system in the face of climate change," Randall said.
"What we aim to do is increase its resilience and accelerate adaptation to warming."
The urgency is sharpened by how much remains unknown. Randall recently attended a workshop on a single coral symbiont genus thought to contain more than 100 species that have yet to be identified.
Australia opened its first frozen coral biorepository in 2012. Today it also stores material from kelp forests, oyster reefs and seagrass meadows, as marine heatwaves strip away those ecosystems.
Much of the work centres on the Great Barrier Reef, which has suffered six mass bleaching events since 2016. When ocean temperatures stay too high for too long, corals expel the algae living inside their tissues. Without them, many eventually die.
The frozen material can last "many, many years, if not decades and beyond" in a secure facility, Randall said. Some is held at minus 80C.
From archive to action
In the Caribbean, frozen coral is already helping to restore damaged reefs.
In some areas, coral populations have fallen so dramatically that the survivors are now too scattered to reproduce naturally. Scientists are stepping in, using cryopreserved sperm from one reef to fertilise eggs on another.
Researchers are also freezing the microscopic algae that live inside coral tissue and provide much of its food. Some tolerate heat better than others, making them another way of banking resilience against a warming ocean.
Australia has not reached that point. The Great Barrier Reef still retains considerable resilience, but researchers fear there is a tipping point beyond which recovery becomes far more difficult.
"The modellers are telling us that the sooner we can start deploying resilient corals on to the Great Barrier Reef, the better chance we'll have to maintain the health of the system in the face of climate change," Randall said.
"What we aim to do is increase its resilience and accelerate adaptation to warming."
The urgency is sharpened by how much remains unknown. Randall recently attended a workshop on a single coral symbiont genus thought to contain more than 100 species that have yet to be identified.
Rising ocean temperatures cause corals to expel the algae they depend on for food, leaving them vulnerable to death if the heat persists. Getty Images - Brett Monroe Garner
Who owns a coral?
As marine biobanks grow, questions about ownership and control are becoming harder to ignore. In Australia, they have prompted researchers to rethink how they work with indigenous communities.
In 2022, Randall's team worked with the Woppaburra people, the traditional custodians of the Keppel Islands in central Queensland, to develop a cultural biobanking protocol.
The principle is simple: a coral sample may be removed from the reef and stored hundreds of kilometres away, but for the Woppaburra it remains connected to sea country – the traditional waters and marine environments they have cared for over generations.
"We don't do any work on the Great Barrier Reef without free, prior and informed consent from the traditional owner groups of that sea country," Randall said.
The protocol allows the Woppaburra to retain ownership of samples held in storage, even when they are kept elsewhere. The samples remain under Woppaburra stewardship and can be returned in the future.
For Randall, the partnership reflects a broader shift in how reef science is carried out.
"They were the first scientists," she said. "They had ways of managing country for many, many years. And so there's a lot we can learn from that relationship."
Who owns a coral?
As marine biobanks grow, questions about ownership and control are becoming harder to ignore. In Australia, they have prompted researchers to rethink how they work with indigenous communities.
In 2022, Randall's team worked with the Woppaburra people, the traditional custodians of the Keppel Islands in central Queensland, to develop a cultural biobanking protocol.
The principle is simple: a coral sample may be removed from the reef and stored hundreds of kilometres away, but for the Woppaburra it remains connected to sea country – the traditional waters and marine environments they have cared for over generations.
"We don't do any work on the Great Barrier Reef without free, prior and informed consent from the traditional owner groups of that sea country," Randall said.
The protocol allows the Woppaburra to retain ownership of samples held in storage, even when they are kept elsewhere. The samples remain under Woppaburra stewardship and can be returned in the future.
For Randall, the partnership reflects a broader shift in how reef science is carried out.
"They were the first scientists," she said. "They had ways of managing country for many, many years. And so there's a lot we can learn from that relationship."
