The safeguarding of economically relevant agricultural species has been driven by storing, evaluating, and distributing genetic resources as cryopreserved germplasm maintained in repositories. However, the shift to cryopreservation has been slow within the broader scientific community, especially for fish and invertebrates. To advance within aquatic species, it will be advantageous to develop generalizable pathways that can provide a foundation for repository development and a means for addressing cross-taxa challenges. Aquatic biomedical model organisms and imperiled species are examples of groups with great needs to begin broadening the scope of germplasm repositories. The California brown sea hare, Aplysia californica, is a biomedical model largely used to examine neural development, behavior, and aging. There are many challenges associated with maintaining Aplysia, for example, their production of copious mucus and toxic ink expulsion, which require flow-through aquarium systems or extensive filtration. In addition, culture of multiple algal species is required for feeding, and inbreeding is considered to have detrimental effects on development in this and many other species. Repository storage of frozen material will provide opportunities for the research community to preserve genetic diversity and to create and maintain mutant and transgenic lines. Repository development itself presents challenges, and there are specific problems related to tissue types and developmental stages. A relevant example is the encapsulation of multiple embryos within capsules and semi-rigid strands produced by many gastropods (Figure 1). In collaboration with the National Resource for Aplysia (NRA, University of Miami), our goal is to develop a generalizable cryopreservation pathway, including quality management and economics, that can be applied to this species, with the intention of extending the pathway to other aquatic invertebrates such as oysters and imperiled corals.