While listening to a podcast the other day, I came across a topic that was quite surprising – the idea that seagrass, a random plant in the ocean, is helping us with our fight against climate change. Seagrass is a plant that grows in meadows underwater and they’re often found in reserved locations. Seagrasses provide local animals to hunt and hide between its leaves. With it contributing to reducing carbon emissions, it is considered to be a process of biological carbon sequestration as it takes place in the ocean.  

As described by marine scientist Carlos M. Duarte, seagrass meadows occupy only about 0.1% of the seafloor, but they are responsible for about 1/3 (one-third) of the carbon that gets sequestered in the ocean annually. Seagrass can be thought of as the trees of the ocean, because its process of carbon sequestration is similar to how plants on land convert carbon dioxide to oxygen. The exception is that seagrass takes the carbon dioxide that has been dissolved in the ocean and stores that beneath the soil where it resides. In total, seagrass meadows can store up to 1,000 metric tonnes (1 metric tonne is about 1.1 US tons) of carbon per hectare, which is higher than most terrestrial ecosystems.

However, just as seagrass meadows are helpful to our environment, they are also disappearing around the world due to the impact of natural and, mainly, human causes. The rate of decline has rapidly increased, and it has “loss rates comparable to those of coral reefs and tropical rainforests.” The majority of the impact is due to human causes such as fishing, food security, sea temperatures, ocean acidification, and pollution. Due to the abundant uses of seagrass, it attracts all living beings for its benefits – fish turn to meadows to hide from prey and humans take advantage of them as a source of protein.  

Seeing the impact on seagrass and seagrass’ impact on the environment, many countries have gathered teams to experiment with seagrass restoration. However, experimenting with restoration is both difficult and expensive, but the chances of success are higher with larger projects, and this is the journey that the United Kingdom has decided to embark on. Their large-scale restoration operation is getting the government involved in hopes of utilizing seagrass meadows to combat climate change and have the UK become a global leader. In the end, we can only reap the benefits of seagrass if we minimize the threats to them.