If you live in Florida, you probably know that manatees are starving because seagrasses are dying. Scientist are desperately trying to feed them lettuce and while it wasn’t working at first, the manatees are coming around. But, how long can we do that?
This Smithsonian article is about the value of seagrasses to the aquatic ecosystem. Seagrass isn’t just eaten, it provides habitat, stabilizes seafloor sediment and sequesters carbon among other critical functions—worldwide.
This session the Florida legislature in considering a bill to allow seagrass mitigation, you know, where the seagrass can be destroyed to make room for development, planting seagrass elsewhere in a less inconvenient place. The measure has already been passed by the House. We have mitigation banks for land and water, where developers (and sometimes governments) impact natural systems and in exchange for being permitted to do it, they restore another piece of land, usually in the same watershed. There are mixed results because, of course, success is dependent on the humans involved.
It’s hard to think about how that can work underwater. Can it?