Seagrass conservation, Global

Drone imagery being collected over Pembroke River seagrass meadow to support monitoring of meadow condition, structure, and recovery. Photo credit: Project Seagrass

This image shows aerial mapping of the Pembroke River seagrass meadow, highlighting the transect used for core sampling as part of the project's monitoring and recovery assessment. Photo credit: Project Seagrass

This image shows multispectral drone imagery of the Pembroke River meadow. False-colour bands like this help the Project Seagrass team distinguish areas of active seagrass growth from stressed or bare sediment, supporting ongoing assessment of meadow health and recovery. Photo credit: Project Seagrass

After several days of replanting, newly potted Z. noltii shoots were successfully transferred into a quarantine tank at the Nursery. Photo credit: Project Seagrass

The team completed the biosecurity process by removing sediment from the cores and soaking the plants in fresh water for 24 hours to get the cores ready for the nursery. Photo credit: Project Seagrass

On the 30th April MSc students and Project Seagrass staff members collected seagrass cores as part of the project's fieldwork phase. Photo credit: Project Seagrass

Successful produced flowering seagrass plants from their own seeds (Zostera marina, aka Common eelgrass).

The Project Seagrass team have been out monitoring our sites in South & West Wales and are pleased to report that there has been healthy recovery at our donor meadow in Llanelli where we gathered 150 Zostera noltei cores back in May 🌱 We monitored our three planting plots in Llanelli with all Zostera noltei transplants (75 in total) still present, with variable expansion. In comparison, our results from Cardiff showed few remaining Zostera noltei cores and that our Zostera marina seeds (gathered from our subtidal donor meadow in Porthdinllaen and planted by DIS back in May) did not emerge. We hope to understand why this isn’t working to inform future work 🌱

The dive team have been busy monitoring the meadows, assessing how the plants are doing, counting spathes, checking seeds and overall plant conditions. A particular highlight has been the news that they have found pipefish eggs laid on the seagrass in their Dale meadow, this is an excellent indicator that the meadow is thriving, and the ecosystem is doing exceptionally well. This has been a real highlight for the team and for UK seagrass restoration.

The team in the field was occupied with acquiring and refining their skills in preparation for the numerous upcoming fieldwork projects this year! #fieldwork #skills #preparation #projects #team #seagrass #projectseagrass #northwales #solentseagrass #essexseagrass

A vibrant seagrass meadow captured off the coast of the Isle of Wight. The dense swathes of seagrass meadows create the perfect nurseries and havens of biodiversity for thousands of marine species.

Conducting transplanting trials taking seagrass cores from a healthy donor meadow and transplanting them into a suitable site to support the natural recovery of seagrass.

Staff and volunteers conducting intertidal surveys of seagrass health at Porthdinllaen in North Wales. This is one of the largest meadows of seagrass found in Wales. It’s important to regularly monitor the meadow to keep an eye on any changes in the health and status of the seagrass.

Knowing where seagrass isn’t can be just as useful as knowing where it is… Did you know you can now upload absence data to SeagrassSpotter? If you know where seagrass used to exist and now no longer does, let us know at http://SeagrassSpotter.org or via the app 🔎🌱

The first seagrass seeds for Restoration Forth are now in the sand!🌱🎉 The Restoration Forth project, a partnership project working with local communities planted around 25,000 seeds last week in trial areas around the Forth 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

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