Who cares about sea grass? You should. Sea grass is an incredibly important environment for all kinds of marine life. Not only does it support the fising industry with the large quantities of fish it is inhabited by, sea grass processes waste that is dumped into the sea, cushioning the blow on the local marine environment. The grass reduces erosion in coastal areas by contributing to the stability of ocean-bottom sediments. It is even a feeding/nursery ground for fish, shellfish, and larger sea life, including creatures that live in coral reefs (coral reefs are another example of a highly threatened, biodiverse ecosystem which contributes tremendously to many aspects of society).

The first comprehensive global assessment of sea grass losses (a fancy phrase for a study on shrinking seagrass beds, or ‘meadows’) showed that 58 percent of seagrass beds are shrinking. The study also showed that, since 1990, the amount lost from each marine meadow annually has gone from 1% to a staggering 7%.

A co-author of the study, James Fourqurean (a professor at Florida International University), claims that the reason sea grass is dissapearing is that it likes the same type of water that people, especially tourists, like: shallow, sheltered areas. Sea grasses are most common in bays and around river mouths, also epicentres of human activity. Though the grass can deal with, in fact clean up, some degree of pollution, when the dredging and dumping is too much, it dies.

“Globally, we lose a seagrass meadow the size of a soccer field every thirty minutes,” are the words of another co-author of the study, William Dennison of the University of Maryland.

The scientists also said that global warming ‘is predicted to have deleterious effects on seagrasses.’

There are ways to help seagrass recover. In Florida, USA, treated wastewater being dumped into caused sea grass to begin dissapearing until the method of treating wastewater was changed and the grass recovered.

This is an example of how we have the technologies and solutions to many of the issues we (as a global community) face, we just need some more motivation to implement them.