Around the planet there are immense challenges that defy resolution despite offering tremendous opportunities. Development of germplasm repositories to protect, maintain, and distribute genetic resources of aquatic species is such a challenge. For example, the results of decades of selective breeding and millions of dollars of investment are typically maintained as live populations for fish and shellfish. This is risky and unnecessarily expensive. Thus, despite 70 years of cryopreservation research, fish and shellfish only have minimal frozen collections although there are thousands of publications, primarily addressing creation of freezing protocols. This is in stark contrast to livestock such as dairy for which massive collections drive multi-billion-dollar global markets for improved genetics. The lack of repository capabilities suppresses advances across aquaculture, conservation programs, natural fisheries, biomedical models, and addressing food security and poverty alleviation. Recognition of this as an immense challenge (not addressed by current approaches) is an important step towards resolving it. Because problems such as this are beyond the resources of single entities, new models are required to address them.
An emerging model involves use of distributed networks to combine the efforts of large, interconnected communities that share common motivation, and offers opportunities for management of aquatic genetic resources. This approach was used, for example, to develop the Linux operating system in the 1990s through open-source software development driven by thousands of volunteer computer programmers. This sharing and community-based mechanism was in direct response to the limitations of proprietary development. The success of Linux provided impetus for other open-source projects, and the accrued experience has opened doors to expansion of distributed development for software. This spirit has emerged in renewed form with new consumer-level design and fabrication technologies that can enable study, production, distribution, modification, improvement, and commercialization (based on licensing agreements) of open hardware devices shared over the internet as computer-aided design (CAD) files. Fabrication can combine powerful tools such as microprocessors and microcontrollers, 3-D printing (of plastic, resins, and metal), printed circuitry, LEDs and fiber optics, laser etching and cutting, and CNC machining. As such, these diverse technologies provide a powerful alternative to traditional research and proprietary development by enabling combined efforts across multiple communities to establish and operate germplasm repositories and manage and eventually commercialize genetic resources of aquatic species.