People power is helping restore sea grass meadows up and down the South Australian coastline. After decades of neglect, a volunteer group is spending the festive season combing beaches and getting out on water, trying to restore this vital ecosystem.
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00:00 Ready, take, go.
00:05 Throwing Hessian sacks into the ocean may seem like a strange way to battle climate
00:09 change, but biologists are hoping these bags will be the beginning of a new seagrass meadow
00:14 which will absorb carbon dioxide.
00:17 Seagrass versus even terrestrial forests is a much better carbon sink.
00:21 Around 6,000 hectares of seagrass has been lost from the South Australian coastline,
00:26 mainly because of waste water and sewage being released into the Gulf.
00:30 The loss of seagrass caused fish stocks to decline and sand erosion to increase.
00:35 People look out in the water and they see this beautiful bright blue ocean and they
00:38 think it's fantastic, but if you're a biologist it's quite terrible because it means there's
00:42 no seagrass there, there's no fish habitat there, there's nothing for fish to eat there.
00:47 Stricter environmental regulations have improved water quality and seagrass meadows have recovered.
00:53 But progress has been slow, so a program called Seeds for Snapper has stepped in.
00:58 It's a very slow growing plant and very slow to repair on its own, so this is really just
01:04 about getting people power to help.
01:07 Every year around Christmas time a species of seagrass called Posidonia gets set to release
01:12 its seeds, but without the protection of an established meadow, many wash up before they
01:17 can germinate.
01:19 Now an army of volunteers is combing the beaches of Adelaide and the Fleurieu Peninsula, collecting
01:24 these little seeds and giving them a second chance.
01:28 Collecting seeds, even if you don't find any, it's a better day than being at home doing
01:32 the washing.
01:33 The seeds are stored in specialised tanks and when they're ready, sewn into hessian
01:37 sacks to stop them from washing up again.
01:40 Then they're taken back out into the ocean where hopefully the little seedlings will
01:44 grow up to help other youngsters.
01:47 It's actually really good habitat for a lot of our juvenile fish species, so things like
01:51 snapper, whiting, squid, even the beautiful leafy sea dragon.
01:55 Some seaside seed sowing to grow more marine meadows.
01:58 [BLANK_AUDIO]