Q1 Meeting – January 2024
In 2024 THE SEAGRASS CONSORTIUM scaled up restoration activities in both the nationaal Park Oosterschelde and le Parc naturel marin du Bassin d’Arcachon. We supported gipreb to pilot seagrass restoration by transplantation in l’Étang de Berre.
In January The Seagrass Consortium’s meeting was held at The Mediterranean Institute for Advanced Studies (IMEDEA-CSIC-UIB).
In January filming also took place for BBC Storyworks on the Eastern Scheldt.
February 2024
In February a further 612 Zostera noltii sod transplants and 8000 Zostera noltii seagrass seeds were planted in le Parc naturel marin du Bassin d’Arcachon. This was again at the restoration site Salines. This work was effected in collaboration with young people from Service Civique, a French government program offering 16-30 year olds voluntary, general interest missions to develop personal skills while contributing to society.
Govers Lab group visits AWI on Sylt (Photos?)
March 2024
In March the Sea Ranger Service in collaboration with the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen seeded 3,000 Zostera noltii seagrass seeds and 50,000 Zostera marina seeds across 13 sites in the Nationaal Park Oosterschelde.
Q2 Meeting – April 2024
In April 2024 we held our consortium meeting in Rotterdam, with site visits to Roelshoek and Oude Tonge within the Nationaal Park Oosterschelde. This was an opportunity for the whole team to hear directly from Rijkswaterstaat about the history of the marine system, but also an opportunity to share knowledge and experience in-situ, with l’Office français de la biodiversité (OFB), Project Seagrass and IMEDEA-CSIC-UIB in particularly all having extensive experience of restoring Zostera sp.
May 2024
In early May 2024 GIPREB hosted staff from Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and IMEDEA-CSIC-UIB in Berre l’Étang to concretise upcoming plans for piloting their first seagrass transplants. This opportunity to accelerate the recovery of the lagoon presented itself following an agreement that had been reached in 2023 for the better management of freshwater discharges into the lagoon.
Following positive site assessement. Later that month, a team from Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and the Sea Ranger Service joined GIPREB and local volunteers to pilot a large-scale (1200 sods) transplantation of Zostera noltii at two restoration sites in the lagoon: “Batidou” and “Bouquet”.
In May we also conducted a large scale seagrass transplantation operation in the Nationaal Park Oosterschelde, transplanting 2160 Zostera noltii seagrass sods across 5 different restoration sites.
Q3 Meeting – June 2024
The 2024 World Seagrass Conference (WSC2024) and 15th International Seagrass Biology Workshop (ISBW15) took place in Napoli, Italy, from June 17th to June 21st 2024. The theme of this year’s conference and workshop was “Seagrasses in the Anthropocene”, highlighting the critical state of seagrass ecosystems under accelerating human pressures.
Environmental changes are driving these vital ecosystems into unprecedented configurations, making a return to their previous states increasingly unfeasible. It was acknowledged that our global challenge is now to establish a new baseline for seagrass, and work to protect and restore existing seagrass ecosystems.
July 2024
Summer brings the opportunity for seagrass seed collection and in 2024 the Sea Ranger Service started by collecting Zostera noltii seeds in Santander. The team at IHCantabria also commenced a phenology study of their local seagrass meadows in order to better understand when both their Zostera marina and Zostera noltii meadows are producing the most seeds.
In le Parc naturel marin du Bassin d’Arcachon the Sea Ranger Service started by monitoring the transplanted sods before switching their attention to Zostera noltii seed collection.
In 2024 they were also able to support the efforts of Ifremer station d’Arcachon who were undertaking their mapping EU Water Framework Directive mapping obligations for Zostera marina by providing ‘ground truth’ GPS data for the presence of Zostera marina along the Cap Ferret peninsula.
In addition the Chantiers Participatifs of le Parc naturel marin du Bassin d’Arcachon began for another season.
Monitoring in the Eastern Scheldt.
August 2024
In August in le Parc naturel marin du Bassin d’Arcachon more Zostera noltii seed collections were undertaken by the Sea Ranger Service.
The European Seagrass Restoration Alliance was founded in Mios and consortium members from Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and l’Office français de la biodiversité (OFB) visited the Le Palais des Congrès d’Arcachon to explore possible dates for the hosting of the 2nd European Seagrass Restoration Workshop in 2025.
With very few Zostera marina seeds being reported from phenology surveys in le Parc naturel marin du Bassin d’Arcachon or Santander, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen also visited Lac d’Hossegor to see if there was any seed production happening in other local meadows. There wasn’t.
Throughout August the phenology study in Santander and the local Zostera marina meadows were showing clear signs of flowering, but no seed production.
Flowering stages of Zostera marina: 1) styles erect from the spadix 2 , 2) styles bend back after pollination, 3) pollen is released from the anthers 3 , 4) seed maturation, 5) seeds are released. Image taken from Infantes and Moksnes (2018).
Stages 1-3 were seen across the meadow, but Stages 4 or 5 couldn’t be found.
In the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark seed collections were also undertaken by the Sea Ranger Service in collaboration with Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.
September 2024
De Hamburger Hallig is an area on the westcoast of Nordfriesland district in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, that has for a number of years acted as a donor meadow for seagrass restoration in the Netherlands.
In September a team from Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and the Sea Ranger Service visited to collected the seeds of the annual ecotype of Zostera marina for planting in 2025 in the Nationaal Park Oosterschelde.
First noltii seed processing at Stichting Zeeschelp
Q4 Meeting – October 2024
In October 2024 we first visited Project Seagrass at their HQ in Bridgend, Wales. We visited one of their active restoration sites in Llanelli, before visiting the Project Seagrass Nursery. In 2020 Project Seagrass set up their pilot nursery project to determine whether they were are able to grow mature seagrass at scale to support restoration efforts in the field and so it was a fantastic opportunity to learn from their experience to date.
We also returned to the Nationaal Park Oosterschelde to share in-situ with stakeholders exactly how the Sea Ranger Service was enabling us to scale up active seagrass restoration and monitoring.
November 2024
In November we were fortunate to be invited by Prof. Dr. Michele Mistri and colleagues from the Università degli Studi di Ferrara, Italy. This was co-ordinated in collaboration with the European Seagrass Restoration Alliance and was delivered as part of the the LIFE-TRANSFER project which aimed at improving the conservation status of the Coastal lagoon habitat of the EU Habitats Directive (1150*) in eight Natura 2000 network sites: 4 in Italy, 2 in Greece and 2 in Spain.
Colleagues from across the European seagrass restoration community joined in Ferrara to collaborate and engage in knowledge exchange, including: Universiteit Gent, Le Conservatoire national des arts et métiers (CNAM), L’Office français de la biodiversité (OFB), Institut français de recherche pour l’exploitation de la mer (Ifremer), GIPREB, GIS Posidonie, Universidade de Aveiro, Ocean Alive, Centro de Ciências do Mar da Universidade do Algarve (CCMAR), Green Balkans, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen and the Sea Ranger Service.
