{"id":93663,"date":"2020-10-20T20:30:01","date_gmt":"2020-10-20T17:30:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/restoring-seagrasses-can-bring-coastal-bays-back-to-life\/"},"modified":"2020-10-20T20:30:01","modified_gmt":"2020-10-20T17:30:01","slug":"restoring-seagrasses-can-bring-coastal-bays-back-to-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/restoring-seagrasses-can-bring-coastal-bays-back-to-life\/","title":{"rendered":"#Restoring seagrasses can bring coastal bays back to life"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Restoring seagrasses can bring coastal bays back to life<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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\"Restoring
\n Eelgrasses covered with small snails, which keep the leaves clean by feeding on algae that live on them. Credit: Jonathan Lefcheck, CC BY-ND<\/a>
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A century ago Virginia’s coastal lagoons were a natural paradise. Fishing boats bobbed on the waves as geese flocked overhead. Beneath the surface, miles of seagrass gently swayed in the surf, making the seabed look like a vast underwater prairie.<\/p>\n


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More than 70 species<\/a> of seagrasses grow in shallow waters around the world, on every continent except Antarctica. In Virginia, beds of eelgrass<\/a> (Zostera marina<\/i>) provided habitat for bay scallops and food for birds, and kept barrier islands from washing away. Eelgrass was so common that people who lived near the shore packed and baled it to use as insulation<\/a> for homes, schools and hospitals. <\/p>\n

In the 1930s, however, pandemic plant disease and repeated hurricanes eliminated the eelgrass along Virginia’s eastern shore. The once-vibrant seafloor became barren mud, leading to a loss of “wildfowl, the cream of salt-water fishing, most of the clams and crabs, and all of the bay scallops,” sportsman and publisher Eugene V. Connett<\/a> wrote in 1947<\/a>. <\/p>\n

We are marine scientists who study seagrasses<\/a>, marine biodiversity<\/a> and coastal ecosystems<\/a>. In a newly published study, we describe the results of a 20-year mission to reintroduce eelgrass into Virginia coastal bays using a novel seed-based approach<\/a>. <\/p>\n

This project has now restored 9,600 acres of seagrasses across four bays\u2014one of the most successful marine restoration efforts anywhere in the world. It has triggered large increases in fishes and invertebrates, made the water clearer and trapp<\/a>ed large quantities of carbon in seafloor sediments, helping to slow climate change. We see this work as a blueprint for restoring and maintaining healthy ecosystems along coastlines around the world.<\/p>\n

Why didn’t seagrasses recover naturally?<\/b><\/p>\n

Development, nutrient runoff and other human impacts have damaged marshes, mangroves, coral reefs and seagrasses in many bays and estuaries worldwide. Loss or shrinkage of these key habitats has reduced commercial fisheries, increased erosion, made coastlines more vulnerable to floods and storms and harmed many types of aquatic life. Rapid climate change has compounded these effects through rising global temperatures, more frequent and severe storms and ocean acidification.<\/p>\n

In the late 1990s, local residents told two of us who are longtime students of seagrasses (Robert “JJ” Orth and Karen McGlathery) that they had spotted small patches of eelgrass in shallow waters off Virginia’s eastern shore. For years the conventional view had been that seagrasses in this area had not recovered from the events of the 1930s because human activities had made the area inhospitable for them<\/a>.<\/p>\n

But studies showed that water quality in these coastal bays was comparatively good<\/a>. This led us to explore a different explanation: Seeds from healthy seagrass populations elsewhere along the Atlantic coast simply weren’t reaching these isolated bays. Seagrasses are underwater flowering plants, so seeds are among the main ways they reproduce and spread to new environments.<\/p>\n

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\n Eelgrass beds were restored in four bays at the southern tip of Virginia\u2019s eastern shore on the Atlantic coast. Credit: David J. Wilcox\/VIMS, CC BY-ND<\/a>
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Sowing a new crop<\/b><\/p>\n

From our earlier research<\/a>, we knew that when eelgrass seeds fall from the parent plant, they sink to the sea bottom quickly and don’t move far from where they land. We also knew that these seeds don’t germinate until late fall or early winter. This meant that if we collected the seeds in spring, when eelgrass flowers, we could hold them until the fall, helping them survive over the months in between.<\/p>\n

We decided to try reseeding eelgrass in the areas where they were missing. Starting in 1999, we collected seeds by hand from underwater meadows in nearby Chesapeake Bay\u2014plucking the long reproductive shoots, bringing them back to our laboratory and holding them in large outdoor seawater tanks until they released their seeds naturally. After about 10 years we started gathering the grasses using a custom-built underwater “lawn mower” to collect many more of the reproductive shoots than we could by hand. <\/p>\n

In 2001 we sowed our first round by simply tossing seeds from a boat. Our first test plots covered 28 acres of mud flats in waters 2 to 3 feet deep. Returning the following year, we saw new seedlings sprouting up. <\/p>\n

Each year since then, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science<\/a> and the Nature Conservancy’s Virginia Coast Reserve<\/a>, along with staff and students from the University of Virginia<\/a>, have led a team of scientists and citizens to collect and seed a combined 536 acres of bare bottom in several coastal bays.<\/p>\n

These initial plots took off and rapidly expanded. By 2020 they covered 9,600 acres across four bays. Several factors helped them flourish. These bays are naturally flushed with cool, clean water from the Atlantic Ocean. And they lie off the tip of Virginia’s eastern shore, where there is little coastal development. <\/p>\n


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