Oceans

Seagrass is vital to our oceans for biodiversity, oxygen production, the absorption of carbon, cleaner waters, and coastal protection – yet we are losing it fast. WWF is helping to restore this habitat by undertaking large-scale seagrass planting at suitable sites across the UK, where seagrass previously existed and where threats to seagrass growth have been removed. We are also helping put in place procedures to involve coastal communities and stakeholders in project design and implementation and create a sustainable seagrass restoration model that governments and stakeholders can roll out across the UK. This project provides an important nature-based solution to both the climate and biodiversity crises, showing that it is possible to restore seagrass on a large scale – and with it the health of our oceans.

Seagrass could play a vital role in the fight against climate change. However, we will need to speed up the seagrass restoration process if we are to plant our target of 2,500 hectares of seagrass in UK waters by 2030. Currently, we rely on a large number of volunteers to help collect and process the seeds by hand, which is time-consuming and labour-intensive. While volunteering is a crucial element of community engagement, our aim is to mechanise the seed collecting, processing, and planting by developing tools that will speed up the restoration process and bring down the cost ten-fold to around £20,000 per hectare. These technologies will be critical in unlocking future large-scale investment from government and industry and ensuring seagrass is a solution to carbon capture.
Other factors to realise our ambition include the removal of licensing barriers for seagrass restoration. The UK Government must also provide leadership by coordinating and facilitating efforts to restore critical coastal habitats, and by providing funding support to scale up those efforts. 

We will measure the number of seeds and hectares planted; mature plants per hectare; local community members who are actively engaged; the reach of awareness events; and media pieces. We will also measure the change in government restoration policy through evidence of licensing streamlining and cost reduction; and in government agencies taking a more pro-active role in co-ordinating and enabling seagrass restoration (such as evidence of marine planning and available funding). Lastly, we will monitor water quality, biodiversity, and carbon capture over the long term to evaluate the benefits that seagrass restoration provides.

Seagrass is vital for biodiversity: 20% of the world’s 25 biggest fisheries are supported by seagrass nursery habitat and, in the UK, seagrass meadows support a wide range of species including two seahorse species, greater and lesser spotted dogfish, grey seal, octopus, and sand eel. Seagrass also has huge benefits for climate: seagrass can capture and store carbon at 35 times the rate of tropical rainforest and globally it accounts for 10-18% of total ocean carbon storage despite occupying less than 0.1% of ocean floor. It also helps climate adaptation, reducing coastal erosion and flooding by absorbing wave energy.

WWF presents seagrass restoration as a nature-based solution to both the urgent biodiversity and climate crisis, as well as a benefit to local coastal economies. In addition to supporting an increase in fish, crab, and shrimp numbers, which will benefit fisheries; seagrass also helps improve water quality by removing excess organic material and nitrogen, which will benefit water-based recreational activities and so improve local wellbeing and tourism livelihoods.

Success will depend on the programme reflecting the needs of local people, building public understanding of the importance and benefits of seagrass, and providing a platform to encourage debate and address any concerns about the future of the seagrass meadows. In Wales, we have held discussions with local boat users and fishermen to resolve issues, involving these important stakeholders in the design and implementation of the project. This work helps us engage communities and ocean users and build positive messages about this incredible plant and the important role of key coastal habitats like seagrass in providing the ecosystem services that humans rely on for their wellbeing. If environmental conditions remain favourable, then the seagrass we plant will look after itself and spread. We will set up local stakeholder groups to help manage the areas in which we restore seagrass, and Swansea University and Project Seagrass will continue to monitor the seagrass and its ecosystem service impacts over the long term in co-ordination with local partners.

There is a growing public awareness of the enormous potential benefits to our health and economy of a thriving sea on people’s doorsteps. WWF’s Global Futures Report highlights that losing our coastal ecosystems could cost the UK economy at least £15bn each year by 2050 unless action is taken now. We are exploring how we can build on our seagrass restoration work and connect it with other coastal habitat restoration to help tackle the biodiversity and climate crises, whilst benefiting local livelihoods (such as fisheries). We are looking to collaborate with NGOs working on bivalve restoration – including oysters and mussels – and saltmarsh restoration to see if we can integrate the restoration of different coastal habitats. The project partners are members of the Environment Agency’s Restoring Meadows, Marshes and Reefs (REMEMARE) stakeholder group that has set targets for the restoration of critical coastal habitats in England and is building collaboration to enable targets to be met effectively.

Seagrass restoration helps the WWF-UK marine team deliver our Ocean Recovery strategy by restoring our coastal ecosystems and working with coastal communities, and also by supporting our work to reduce carbon emissions. As the project partners will need to collaborate with other agencies to meet the ambitious 2030 target, the model we are developing for seagrass restoration will be shared with relevant government agencies and NGOs for use across the UK. It will also be shared across the WWF network and we have already had strong interest from the WWF Germany, Denmark, and Indonesia offices. The engagement approach we use to deliver seagrass restoration is applicable to a range of marine conservation delivery projects and will similarly be shared alongside the restoration approach. In addition, we are in conversation with other NGOs and government agencies about integrating seagrass restoration with other coastal habitat restoration plans to maximise ecosystem service benefits.