coast ENVIRONMENT
Hidden from view, the lime green fronds of seagrass not only nurture baby fish but capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, which is why a Scottish community group of underwater gardeners is restoring these precious marine meadows
As the tide reaches its lowest point along Argyll’s Loch Craignish, Will Goudy snorkels through the shallows. Carefully, he picks seeds from the bright green plants swaying in the ebb and flow beneath him. Will, project lead on this loch seagrass project, is helping to restore some of the underwater seagrass meadows that have been lost in recent decades here on the west coast of Scotland. Seagrass is the only flowering plant that lives in seawater and pollinates while submerged. It starts to flower every June and once the seeds begin to mature in late July, Will and his team of wetsuited volunteers harvest hundreds of thousands of them from existing seagrass meadows, then return them to shore. these stems are placed inside two holding tanks of seawater to mature for a couple of months. During that time, Will changes the water regularly to keep it fresh until seeds are naturally released from the pods. Next, he and his team scoop them out of the tanks, filling thousands of small hessian sacks with 50 seeds (only about 5% will germinate) and sterile sand to weigh them down once they get replanted. More volunteers help Will with replanting from October to December – last year 60 people joined in, spacing almost 3,000 bags out one per square metre on the loch’s barren mud over a quarter of a hectare.
‘The community here is pretty switched on with environmental stuff so everyone is keen. So many people come and get totally blown away by the seagrass,’ says Will, who looks forward to seeing the seagrass meadows spread as these seedlings grow over the next seven to 10 years. This summer, the first shoots from 2021’s harvest will be visible and the older hessian bags will have started to rot away. He aims to plant 250,000 seeds over half a hectare.
OCEAN GRASSLANDS
Although the sea loch has healthy patches of seagrass meadows of Zostera marina or common eelgrass, they are fragmented, covering only 10 hectares. Decades ago, it had 80 hectares of seagrass and Will explains that they would never join up again without active intervention. So, a year ago, Seawilding, Scotland’s first community-led marine habitat restoration charity, began its seagrass project. First established to encourage native oyster populations back to Scottish seas, the core team of six now works closely with marine conservation charity Project Seagrass and the Scottish Association for Marine Science to restore these natural seagrass habitats.
The loss of seagrass meadows in Loch C
