Green shoots of seagrass recovery
Craignish Seawilding project growing successfully
Scotland’s first restored seagrass has successfully germinated and sprouted in Loch Craignish.
Eight months after they planted the seeds in the seabed off the Craignish peninsula the community volunteers, scientists and divers involved in the project were excited to see the new green shoots and announced the success on Tuesday May 3.
Operations manager of Loch Craignish-based charity Seawilding Will Goudy said: ‘It’s been an anxious wait all winter to see if the seed would germinate and now when we snorkel down to a depth of around two metres we can clearly see green shoots protruding from the bags.
‘This is an immensely exciting moment for us – a first for Seawilding and for seagrass restoration in Scotland.’
The project, a partnership between the Craignish community, Project Seagrass, the Scottish Association for Marine Science and funded by NatureScot’s Biodiversity Restoration Fund, helps to pave the way for the wider restoration of seagrass around Scotland.
In August 2021 more than 60 snorkellers and volunteers from the Craignish peninsula, students from the Scottish Association for Marine Science and volunteers from across Scotland took part in the project which aims to extend an existing meadow by a quarter of a hectare at Loch Craignish.
The team collected approximately 120,000 seeds from the seabed and the seed was then processed in tanks and, using methodologies refined by Project Seagrass in Wales, planted out on the restoration sites in small hessian bags which give the seed purchase on the muddy seabed and help to prevent predation by crabs.
This year the charity plans to expand its seagrass restoration in the loch by planting another quarter hectare and refining different methodologies to make the process less labour intensive.
‘We need to create best-practice, low-cost methodologies to roll out seagrass restoration at scale,’ said Seawilding’s founder Danny Renton.
‘Seagrass is so important for ocean health, biodiversity and carbon capture and community-led projects like ours not only show what’s possible, but they also influence the bigger picture.’
With growing interest in Seawilding’s community-led marine habitat restoration projects, this summer the charity will be training other UK-wide coastal community groups in the rudiments of seagrass and native oyster restoration Meanwhile, Seawilding is restoring one million native oysters to the Loch Craignish seabed where they were once abundant.
Native oysters, like seagrass, provide vital eco-system services by filtering and cleaning seawater, and creating complex reefs which become nursery grounds for spawning fish.
So far the charity has introduced more than 300,000 native oysters to the loch.
‘It’s been an anxious wait all winter to see if the seed would germinate.’