In the mudflats of Swan Bay, Victoria, royal spoonbills sweep their paddle-shaped bills through shallow water. Nearby, under the grass-covered roof of the Queenscliff marine research centre, a team of scientists from Deakin University are trying to bring the ecosystems those birds and many others rely on back from the brink.<\/p>\n
Some of that involves associate professor Prue Francis\u2019s beakers \u2013 filled with bubbling brown gunk \u2013 that are bathed in red light inside a fridge equipped with sensors, alarms and a backup generator.<\/p>\n
The beakers contain golden kelp. The red light keeps them perpetually in an early algal life stage. \u201cThey won\u2019t produce the next stage. They\u2019ll just keep growing like grass,\u201d Francis says. Another fridge, smaller and colder, contains trays of tiny vials of the same stuff, but dormant.<\/p>\n
Leafy seadragon and golden kelp. Photograph: Stefan Andrews<\/p>\n
These fridges are part of what the university calls its \u201cliving library\u201d: a biobank, or long-term storage for at-risk marine life forms. Biobanks act as insurance policies against species extinction, and as research hubs for scientists studying species genetics, growth and resilience in the age of environmental crisis.<\/p>\n
\u201cRestoration has become quite an urgent need for not just our coastline but for coastlines all across Australia and the world,\u201d Francis says.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of our research teams are looking at ways of being able to do restoration, or future-proofing some of our organisms that are getting lost at such a high rate.\u201d<\/p>\n
These facilities are becoming increasingly important.<\/p>\n
Ear snips and tail tips<\/p>\n
Deakin\u2019s living library is one of an array of biobanks throughout Australia, which can store everything from seeds of native plants to the cells and tissue of threatened animal species.<\/p>\n
The Australian National Botanic Gardens in Canberra collects seeds from the ACT region, the Australian Alps, Uluru, Kakadu and Norfolk, Christmas and Cocos islands. The seeds are harvested in the wild and stored in a -20C vault but can be grown into adult plants if needed.<\/p>\n
Melbourne Museum has a more unusual collection: cryogenically frozen but still-living cells of Australian wildlife. In this biobank, tissue samples (such as ear snips from mammals or tail tips from reptiles), DNA and living cells are kept in 2ml tubes at -196C, a temperature at which all biological activity stops. There\u2019s even the potential to store embryos from threatened species.<\/p>\n
Prue Francis with the golden kelp biobank. Photograph: Ellen Smith\/The Guardian<\/p>\n
It was a crisis that triggered the establishment of biobanks for golden kelp, a foundation species of the 8,000km stretch of interconnected ecosystems that make up Australia\u2019s Great Southern Reef. The kelp provides critical habitat and food for lobsters, abalone and numerous fish species, many of them found nowhere else on Earth.<\/p>\n
But this kelp likes cold water, and it\u2019s the first thing to die off when water warms up.<\/p>\n