"From tiny seeds come big results: replanting seagrass meadows that help fish, protect coastlines, and absorb climate-heating carbon dioxide."
"Chris Patrick is optimistic about seagrass restoration.
“There are lots of kinds of restoration happening in the world — mangroves, oyster reefs, forests, coral reefs,” says the director of the aquatic vegetation restoration program at Virginia Institute of Marine Science. “But seagrass is one of the only systems I can think of where it happens very fast if conditions are right. You get a 15 to 1 return. For every acre planted, 15 acres grow. Some restored areas look like they did 100 years ago.”
What a difference a century can make.
Since the early 1900s, vast coastal seagrass meadows — think of underwater fields of long, swaying plants that host hundreds of nearby marine species — have dwindled and even disappeared around the world. They’ve succumbed to a growing list of insults that includes thermal stress from climate change, dredging, coastal development, intentional removal, disease, and increasing pollution runoff from agriculture and other human activities."
Melissa Gaskill reports for The Revelator February 18, 2025.
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