Nature’s Most Overlooked Climate Solution: How Seagrass Is Quietly Saving Coastal Economies

0:08 The most powerful climate solution underwater is not coral. This is the How to Protect the Ocean podcast, your weekday ocean news update. Here, if you want, if you care about staying informed on the ocean each and every weekday, hit that follow button right now so you don't miss tomorrow's story. All right, look, seagrass meadows are the thing. Over the last number of months, I've been on a real kick for seagrass. In fact, I want to crowdfund. a seagrass podcast so people can learn more about seagrasses and their benefits and the fact that they house a lot of biodiversity and they are a carbon sink, which is going to be a huge tool against the fight against climate change or for the fight against climate change.

0:50 so seagrass meadows, provide massive long term carbon storage, nursery habitats for commercially important fishery species, as well as other habitat forming species, shoreline protection for storm and storm buffering. water quality improvement, yet they remain underfunded and unrepresented and unrepresented and underrepresented and underrepresented, underrepresented, yet they remain underfunded and underrepresented in climate policy. Why is that? Why are we still under investing in one of the most efficient natural carbon sinks on the planet?

1:33 That is the big question around here. So lot of the public narratives often focus on forests, renewable energy, coral reefs as their iconic ocean ecosystem. Seagrasses rarely enters the conversation. It's just like when we talk about climate policy and you see like these New York Climate Week or Toronto Climate Week or whatever climate policy and we rarely talk about the ocean. There's rarely workshops or panels. on the ocean, maybe one day out of an entire week. It should be the most of the week because the oceans play such a big role in regulating climate change and regulating weather patterns. Seagrass is the same thing when we talk about one of the most important habitats in the ocean.

2:17 Yes, research shows seagrass ecosystems are among the most efficient natural carbon sinks on Earth, but they're still underfunded. If climate mitigation and coastal resilience are priorities, seagrass should be central. not peripheral. These are the things that we are going to cover today. And there was a new key finding. So let's look at what nature, let's look at what the data shows, right? Let's look at the data study in 2003 in nature climate change show that seagrass ecosystems store significant amounts of carbon and sediments, not just in the plant tissue. The carbon storage varies depending on species, geography and sediment type.

2:58 So depending on where you are in the world, what species is present, they all vary. Critical point. get rid of that. So unlike forests where much of the carbon is stored above ground, seagrass locks carbon into oxygen poor sediments. So what they come in, they put it into the carbon dioxide, into these sediments, it locks it in there for a long time where it can't go anywhere. Seagrass loss is not just habitat loss. It can become a climate feedback risk. In other words, if you are not absorbing carbon dioxide as a uh coastal habitat, you are losing in the battle against climate change.

3:47 It's a risk in the climate change. And we've seen the loss of seagrasses throughout the entire world. In fact, we don't even know how many seagrass habitats there are in the world. Project Seagrass is working on Seagrass Spotter. It's essentially a web app that you can go and you can populate. data on where you find seagrass is, what species it is, and how vast it is, like how much does it cover. You can do all of that even as a citizen scientist and you can go in and you can put it in there and so we can get more data along the area. This is a huge, huge step in the right direction. We've been able to map through Project Seagrass, map many, many more seagrass habitats than we once thought we had.

4:28 And that's the beginning of everything. But without having the knowledge of how much is around and how much cover it takes and how much seagrass there is and what species there are and where they're located, it's going to be really difficult to fight against climate change when you have a habitat like this that can store that much carbon. So restoration is not just symbolic. It can measurably improve carbon storage, biodiversity and ecological stability. So carbon accumulation increases as restored systems mature. So if you think about it, as you start to restore habitats, right? When you restore habitats with seagrasses, that's when you start to really see, you're starting to increase that carbon dioxide, you accumulate that carbon in the sediment, right?

5:13 You start to get better water quality, because it's plant material, so it sucks up nutrients, so you don't get as much algae. You get an attraction of different types of fish and invertebrates, so you increase your biodiversity by up to 10 times, right? By up to 10 times what you normally would have in other habitats, coastal habitat areas. There's so many benefits to that. Now the global policy for UN Blue Carbon report looks at coastal systems that play a critical role in climate mitigation and adaptation. So blue carbon systems are often excluded or undervalued in national climate strategies is what they're finding in the report.

5:53 They also found that funding flows still prioritize terrestrial carbon solutions over marine carbon solutions. Again, that's a mistake because the carbon absorption by seagrasses is up to four times, four to ten times more than their terrestrial counterparts. So some governments, they invest billions in carbon markets and infrastructure, but seagrass, despite proven mitigation value, receives a fraction of that attention. So the science is ahead of the policy. We just need to get people to listen from the policymaker standpoint so that we can get funding to fund the restoration of more of these systems.

6:38 There is an entire, entire uh body of research just on the restoration of seagrasses. on seagrasses in general and their role they play in climate mitigation and climate adaptation, plus biodiversity increases, plus water quality is better in those areas. There's so many different things that can happen, yet we are underfunding these systems. Not great. So for NOAA, they put out a Fisheries and Shoreline Protection Report. They looked at uh seagrass meadows and they documented that uh they serve as a nursery habitat for fish and shellfish species. that support commercial and recreational fisheries.

7:18 They stabilize sediments and reduce wave energy. They improve water quality by trapping particles. So their healthy seagrass supports fish recruitment, which supports the economy. Healthy seagrass reduces erosion and storm damage, so it protects the coastline. Healthy seagrass strengthens coastal economies, just in general with ecotourism, fisheries, and just even just the strength of and the protection of that shoreline. So seagrass is not just a climate solution. It is the fisheries infrastructure and coastal defense combined. So why do these underinvestments still persist? Seagrass is less visible than coral reefs. Plus they're not as pretty as coral reefs.

8:00 Although, you know, I'm sure some will argue that they are. But coral reefs have lots of different colors. They have all these different types of fish that are out and about and you kind of see them. And when you go over and see these corals, these animals, they're pretty cool. When you go over a seagrass, say you're diving or snorkeling over a seagrass, you may not think it's as cool until you start to look inside and see the different fish and vertebrates that are inside, but they're not visible all the time unless you know what you're looking for. So declines are often gradual and unnoticed because we're not monitoring these habitats as much as we are corals. And policy frameworks prioritize terrestrial carbon accounting. This is still, we continue to come up with this. We see this time and time again.

8:42 Marine ecosystems are fragmented across agencies and jurisdictions. And something that's important to raise is this question is, if the solution stores carbon and supports fisheries and protects shorelines, why is it not central to climate budgets? It seems to have a lot of benefits, yet we seem to be underfunding these systems compared to other terrestrial habitats. as well as iconic habitats like coral reefs. Not to say that coral reefs aren't important, nor are those terrestrial habitats, but these are very important in the three ecosystem services that it provides, especially in this time. So if you care about ocean solutions backed by science, follow this show right now so that you don't miss tomorrow's episode.

9:27 All right, so let's just kind of finish it off here. We know seagrass meadows work. They work to decrease climate change or to fight against climate change. They work to increase fisheries production. They work to restore sort of that security around coastlines because they protect the coastline. And I think that's really important. It enhances the resilience in a warming world is what it really comes down to. Underinvestment is not due to the lack of evidence. It is due to the lack of the attention from prioritization. So imagine this, like if you have this magical habitat, essentially, which just is always doing something good.

10:08 Why wouldn't we want to fund it? Why wouldn't we want to bring it to the attention of your government representative? Why wouldn't you want to bring it to the attention of your local representative, right? Whether it's state, local state or federal representative or provincial representative. These are very important systems. They're found in temperate as well as tropical systems. And we need these systems. So the most powerful climate solution underwater is not coral, but it's seagrass. And it's time that we start investing more in seagrass. That's it for today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. If you like this episode and you want to hear more, don't forget to hit that follow button. We're trying to get in front of more eyes. When you hit the follow button, not only do you get stuff to your favorite podcast app each and every day, but you allow us to climb up the charts so more people can see our episodes, more people can see our podcasts and follow it as well and learn more about the ocean.

11:04 so they can live for a better ocean. I want to thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Luan. Have a great day. We'll talk to you next time and happy conservation.