Saving our seagrasses for future generations

With funding from The Nature Conservancy and Deakin University, a group of marine scientists have launched a new website to save declining Australian and New Zealand seagrasses.

The initiative is led by prominent scientists, Deakin University’s Dr Craig Sherman and Professor Gary Kendrick from the University of Western Australia.

“Seagrasses have been declining globally at a scale similar to corals and mangroves, and restoration is a challenge for current practices”, says Professor Kendrick.

“Our team has demonstrated that seagrass restoration is possible, and scalable, and with the right resourcing can contribute to reversing the losses.”

The website will play a vital role in improving capacity and readiness for seagrass restoration in Australia and New Zealand and generate momentum in developing long-term nationally coordinated restoration programs.

The marine environment is particularly difficult to restore, as water and sediment are constantly moving.

Restoration of our seagrass habitats has important knock-on effects for coastal environments – improving recreational and commercial fishery stocks, coastal erosion control, water quality, and carbon sequestration.

This new website will enable the sharing of restoration successes and will encourage further collaboration.

Community groups, restoration practitioners, researchers and government departments are encouraged to access the new website to view current seagrass restoration activities in Australia and New Zealand.

Visit https://seagrassrestorationnetwork.com/