Mary Hagedorn

Research Scientist, Smithsonian Institution/Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology

I think very few people understand that every second breath comes from the ocean really. As you think about it, every second breath that you take, some creature in the ocean, some plant in the ocean has made that for you.

Mary Hagedorn makes the case that every second breath we take is created by an organism from the ocean. As a Research Scientist at the National Zoological Park, Hagedorn is a physiologist who has pioneered many state-of-the-art techniques that may help save our coral reefs. She has developed a conservation program for coral species, using cryobiology, an approach in which the embryos and sperm are frozen and placed into liquid nitrogen, where they remain frozen, but alive, for decades in a genetic bank.

Hagedorn received her Ph.D. in Marine Biology from Scripps Institution of Oceanography. In 2000, she received the George E. Burch Fellowship in Theoretic Medicine and Affiliated.

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Blue Economy

The ocean’s health is like someone who is middle-aged and has had too many burgers and smokes, according to Smithsonian Institution scientist Mary Hagedorn.

That’s not a stellar assessment if you like breathing – oceans produce about 50 percent of the oxygen on the planet.

At Climate One’s first off-site event in Monterey, experts discussed the impacts of global warming and how California could embrace an emerging blue technology industry.