An underwater flowering plant with long green leaves, eelgrass is the foundation of the marine food web.
It provides shelter and a mating ground for juvenile fish and lobster. It improves water quality by absorbing nitrogen, and sequesters a large amount of carbon, too.
Eelgrass is considered by some scientists as the canary in the coalmine for the marine ecosystem. But, it’s in danger, due in part to climate change. Now, a coalition of scientists and organizations in Casco Bay are working on a pilot program to restore degraded seagrass meadows.
“If Marvel were to do a movie, a superhero movie, on a plant, they’d probably pick eelgrass, ’cause it’s truly a superhero,” Glen Page said.
Page is a scientist leading the coalition’s eelgrass restoration efforts in Casco Bay. Today, he’s guiding volunteers like Jamien Jacobs, a retired science teacher, on the start of a multi-day kayak journey from Portland to Harpswell to study the bioregion and see eelgrass up close. Jacobs joined the restoration effort after she found piles of eelgrass washed up on the shore in South Portland.
“After the big January storms last year there was a ton of rooted eelgrass that was blown up on Willard Beach, so I was just collecting it, thinking that we’ve got to get it back in the ground somehow,” she says.
Warming waters, nutrient runoff, and ocean acidification are all taking a toll on eelgrass. A recent study showed that the eelgrass habitat in Casco Bay has shrunk by roughly 54% in just the last four years. And, according to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, the trend is continuing up the coast.
This isn’t the first seagrass restoration effort in Maine. Over a decade-long process by Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in 2007 in Frenchman’s Bay, the restoration succeeded in part because the local community was so invested in the project, Domeyer said. When scientists needed new biodegradable ways to anchor the eelgrass shoots, a group of students dreamed up ceramic disks.
“They asked the local pottery class if they could make them, and it was wildly successful,” she said.
Page and the group of volunteers paddle out to Fort Gorges, a historic granite military fort built in the mid 19th century on Hog Island. Page tells me along the way that Casco Bay is the ideal setting for scientists to work on eelgrass restoration, because of all the shallow water.
“There’s no other place in all of the Gulf of Maine that has more potential habitat because of all the islands sloping off,” he said.
Arriving on Hog Island, we don snorkels, and set out into the icy autumn waters. As the cold seeps into my wetsuit, Page has already dived down to locate the first meadow. And, he’s returned with some good news.
“It’s a thick shoot, I’m very impressed,” he said. “There’s a meadow full of this material. It’s a good sign. There’s been other areas around Fort Gorges that we’ve documented the loss. And yet there’s areas that are holding on. So there are these pockets, which, you know, gives us hope.”
This is a great example of an intact eelgrass meadow — lush, dense, with long flowing blades covering the seafloor. Tiny fish dart in and out of it. But, despite its apparent health, there is a threat lurking within.
Back on the beach, Page briefs the crew of volunteers on what he saw underwater. “So, immediately I found green crabs. So, they’re here,” he said.
Devin Domeyer, a coastal resiliency specialist, says that green crabs, which have been migrating north for decades, have been catastrophic for eelgrass in Maine.
“They not only will burrow directly into the roots of eelgrass, for shelter. They also will clip the eelgrass directly at the base, searching for food.”
Janelle Goeke is a staff scientist at the Casco Bay Estuary Partnership working with Page on the restoration pilot. She told Maine Public that while a multitude of factors are contributing to eelgrass decline up and down the East Coast, in Maine, green crabs are at the heart of the problem. And, they’re working fast.
“The most surprising thing has definitely been just how quickly the eelgrass is disappearing. We made all of these plans back in February and March about, ‘here’s the sites we’re going to go to. Here’s what we’re going to do there.’ And then by the time it was May and we could actually get underwater, some of the beds were just gone.”
Due to an array of intersecting issues, scientists are struggling to stop the spread of green crabs in Maine. But, in the meantime, they can grow new tracts of eelgrass. And to do that, the next step is to prep the seeds.
A few days later, Page and the crew of volunteers meet Lucy Dutton at Bowdoin College’s wet lab facility on Orrs Island. Dutton is a senior biology student doing her thesis on eelgrass germination and reproduction. She pulls out a microscope to show me the tiny eelgrass seeds we’ll be sorting this morning.
“They look like little zucchini! Yeah, they do! Honestly, zucchini… like some sort of squash.”
She and Page walk the volunteers through their process, and they all hunker down for several hours of nit-picky work, sorting the tiny seeds from other underwater debris.
“So what we’re doing is, it’s in some ways like panning for gold,” Page said.
This morning, they are trying to process between 30,000 to 40,000 seeds. One benefit of working with citizen scientists is that the researchers have many more hands, and minds, than they would on her own. Jacobs, the science teacher, has brought a common household device, which Page tests out on a batch of seeds.
“We do have a very very technical, highly specialized tool, which we only use under high attention: the salad spinner.”
Once processed, some of the seeds will stay in the lab over the winter to germinate and sprout. And others will be returned to the ocean floor.
A month later, on a cold October morning, the researchers convene on a floating wooden dock near Cousins Island, just off the coast of Yarmouth. The dock seems mostly to belong to the local seagulls — it’s completely covered in castoff seashell debris, which crunches underfoot.
Three scuba divers have come to carry out the final step–for this year–of the restoration pilot.
“Think warm thoughts! It’s warm, it’s balmy, we’re in the tropics!”
They’ll try out two different planting methods. One is to sprinkle the seeds by hand onto the seafloor. The other is to anchor biodegradable tea bags full of seeds using wooden BBQ skewers. The tea bags are each filled with 200 seeds, mixed with sediment from the seafloor around Cousin’s Island, which the scientists think will help the seeds acclimate and better stay put through winter storms. The scuba divers head out to plant this batch.
“Okay, see you soon! We’ll say hi to the eelgrass seeds! Aw, say goodbye! Sending them off with love!”
The team is underwater for over an hour. They eventually surface, happy the seeding has gone well. Now, the waiting begins — the team won’t really know if their efforts paid off until spring.
If the methods here in Casco Bay prove effective, it could help inform eelgrass restoration efforts all along the East Coast.
While eelgrass is important to the fishing industry and underwater ecosystem, Domeyer said restoring it is also a point of pride for Mainers.
“Maine has a unique phenotype of eelgrass, so it’s special to us, and if we lose it, it will be hard to replace.”
Maine Public’s Climate Desk is made possible by Androscoggin bank, with additional support from Evergreen Home Performance, Bigelow Laboratory, & Lee Auto Malls.
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