Sowing Seagrass Seeds in Wales
Channel: Richard Scrase
Date: 2020-03-10

Sowing seagrass at Dale, south Wales

Sky Ocean Rescue, WWF and Swansea University are running the biggest seagrass restoration project ever undertaken in the UK. Seagrass Ocean Rescue involves 1 million seeds being planted at Dale in Pembrokeshire, Wales. 
Seagrass Ocean Rescue aims to restore 20,000 m2 of the marine plant in west Wales, following the disappearance of up to 92 per cent of the UK’s seagrass in the last century. The huge decline has been caused by pollution, runoff from the land, coastal development and damage from boat propellers and chain moorings.

Seagrass is a flowering marine plant that captures carbon from the atmosphere up to 35 times faster than tropical rainforests, making it a key weapon in the battle against climate change. It often grows in large underwater meadows, which absorb carbon dioxide and release oxygen, providing a nature-based solution.

They hope that this project will create a model that will be used to drive mass restoration of seagrass in the UK.

Our oceans have great potential to help the UK achieve net zero and combat climate change. The ocean has been the buffer around our shores, absorbing over 90% of heat and a third of the carbon dioxide humans have ever created. 

Current efforts to manage our domestic waters are hopeless; fragmented and lack ambition, urgency and accountability.  WWF and Sky Ocean Rescue are calling on the UK Government to use 2020 as the year to develop a radical world-leading ocean recovery programme which takes a holistic approach to the varied issues our oceans are facing, backed by legal commitments and investment.