Chapter 22 - Seagrass transplantation and other seagrass restoration methods

Abstract

This chapter provides an overview of seagrass transplantation and other seagrass bed rehabilitation/restoration methods and describes in detail the techniques employed. It also provides an understanding of site selection, costs, monitoring, and evaluation. Before conducting any seagrass restoration or rehabilitation effort, one needs to clearly identify the objective of the project. Seagrass transplantation and other methods should be used only to restore or rehabilitate seagrass beds lost because of human activities, including reduction in water clarity, mining, dredging, filling, and fishing gear and vessel-related injuries, or for experimental manipulation. Seagrasses should not be planted in areas with no history of seagrass growth, or where the aforementioned disturbances have not ceased. Under those circumstances, the probability of the plants successfully establishing a viable bed is very low. Planting may be done in open, unvegetated areas among the patches of seagrass, but only for the goal of experimental manipulations and the evaluation of planting techniques or as a pilot study before embarking on the large scale effort. These among-patch locations are not a strong test of the efficacy of a technique as they are embedded within viable seagrass territory and do not represent the hazards that isolated plantings would experience at an otherwise unvegetated site.