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https://apnews.com/article/maine-eelgrass-meadows-casco-bay-conservation-588a321999670ee4d1d3436588823af9>
"On a sunny afternoon in early August, the hot air rippled above a sandbar in
Casco Bay as a group of researchers dove into the water. Wearing wetsuits and
flippers, they swam out over sand, rocks and kelp until they reached their
destination: a verdant seagrass meadow.
Long, thin ribbons of bright green stretched out in the water, flattened by the
strong current. Small fish swam in and out of the grass, as crabs and lobsters
crawled underneath. At one point, a seal drifted by.
The divers were there to collect a type of eelgrass called
Zostera marina.
It’s the predominant species of seagrass in Maine. Unlike kelp and other
seaweeds, which are algae, seagrasses are flowering plants that grow
underwater.
Seagrass shelters the young of many marine species, improves water quality and
stores some of the excess carbon released by the burning of fossil fuels. Beds
of seagrass also absorb wave energy, reducing erosion and buffering coastal
communities from storms.
These underwater meadows used to grow abundantly along the Maine coast. But
they’ve declined significantly in recent decades. The data measuring this
decline is imperfect, and efforts to track it are ongoing. But according to the
Maine Department of Environmental Protection’s best estimates, the state had
more than 30,000 acres of seagrass beds in the 1990s. Since then, some regions
of Maine have lost more than half of their seagrass beds.
Scientists say they haven’t collected enough data to pinpoint the exact cause
of the decline, and they don’t expect to find one simple culprit. Rising
temperatures, coastal development, nutrient pollution, harmful algal blooms,
invasive species and worsening storms may all be playing a role. Seagrass
meadows have declined not just in Maine but around the world, and are
considered one of the ecosystems most vulnerable to climate change and other
human activity.
These meadows are important for the ocean’s biodiversity because they are “the
world’s greatest kindergarten” for young sea creatures, said Glenn Page, leader
of the dive team and executive director of the Collaborative for Bioregional
Action Learning and Transformation (COBALT), a Portland-based group working to
restore coastal ecosystems.
Page’s diving team is at the heart of a project involving Bowdoin College, the
Casco Bay Estuary Partnership and other collaborators called Team Zostera,
which aims to study eelgrass reproduction and test methods to harvest, store
and transplant the plant’s seeds. Their effort is part of a larger seagrass
conservation network in Casco Bay that has sprung up in recent years, hoping to
better understand the plant and restore it to places where it has been lost."
Via Susan ****
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
