More than 50 volunteers joined 20 Project Seagrass staff this summer to collect seagrass seeds in the Solent.
The effort comes after a year of monitoring to assess the health of existing seagrass meadows around the Isle of Wight and trials to explore restoration potential. The Seagrass Ocean Rescue project is a partnership between Project Seagrass, Swansea University and WWF working on the Isle of Wight to further understand the best methods for seagrass restoration through scientific planting trials which will help to inform future restoration projects around the UK.
Seagrass is an underwater plant that lives in the shallow, sheltered areas of our coastline. It provides a home for thousands of marine species, helps to stabilise our shores preventing coastal erosion, produces oxygen, creates cleaner water and captures and stores carbon. It also provides a nursery habitat for commercially important fish such as cod and plaice. Unfortunately, the UK has lost the majority of its seagrass meadows in the last century.
The Isle of Wight represents a handful of areas where it still thrives. The Isle of Wight is also a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve which recognises the need to develop and promote solutions reconciling the conservation of biodiversity with its sustainable use. It’s critical that we protect and enhance what we have. The Biosphere Reserve status provides a platform to demonstrate this to the rest of the world.
Evie Furness, research assistant at Swansea University has said:
“Working on the Island gives me so much hope for our oceans. It’s one of the few places where seagrass meadows appear to be expanding. This makes it the ideal place for us to study the best ways to plant it, allowing us to provide better guidelines for successful restoration in areas where seagrass is struggling.”
There are easy ways to get involved with seagrass conservation. Project Seagrass have designed a citizen science tool to track the distribution and status of the world’s seagrass meadows. SeagrassSpotter is a handy app that you can download onto your phone so when you are out exploring the coast and come across seagrass you can easily upload your sighting.
Island visitors and residents will get a chance to meet and find out more about Project Seagrass at Biosphere-related events led by The Common Space this autumn. Find Project Seagrass at Fort Vic Foray on Saturday 24th September and with WWF at Hullabaloo in Sandown Bay on Saturday 15th and Sunday 16th October.
