Six seedlings by April, 430 shoots by autumn: Cornwall's seagrass fights back

Last November, volunteers collected seagrass seeds from a healthy meadow at Torpoint, mixed them with local mud from the Fowey Estuary, and planted them with a modified mud-injection technique. By the end of April, just six seedlings had appeared. Then the meadow woke up: surveyors have now counted more than 430 shoots growing across 50 distinct patches in the estuary. The trial, led by Cornwall Wildlife Trust's Seagrass Project Officer Chloe James under the Seeding Change Together partnership, matters because mainland Britain has lost up to 92% of its seagrass meadows in a century — and seagrass shelters young fish, stores carbon and steadies the seabed.

SDG 14 · Life below water — Mechanism: community action