Genetic improvement generally gains importance as agricultural systems grow and mature. Many sectors within aquaculture have moved beyond the development of production systems and diets, and future gains will come from developing and harnessing genetic resources. These genetic resources have extraordinary value, providing food security and livelihoods for most people on our planet. Unlike terrestrial agriculture which has decades of head start developing seed banks and associated technologies, aquaculture is unprepared to fully protect and commercialize genetic resources, and needs new product forms to complement traditional live broodstocks and seedstocks. Cryopreserved germplasm is an emerging product form that can provide a bridge between broodstock and seedstock and can fundamentally change aquaculture industries but requires repository, community, and technology development to promote access, growth, and sustainability. This bridge would provide capability to control and distribute high-quality genetics around the world in a simple, dependable, and cheap form, especially when processing and management are facilitated and supported by shared community-based open hardware. The input and needs of users can be integrated throughout the design and testing processes, and hardware as well as digital files can be distributed to provide rapid and customized support for distributed networks of diverse practitioners and researchers. In this workshop we welcome hands-on interaction with a novel open-source capability kit that can increase access to protecting and distributing genetic resources of aquaculture species.