The Great Barrier Reef has thousands of kilometres of brilliant corals and colourful fish, but did you know it is also home to one of the largest seagrass ecosystems on the planet? More than 3.5 million hectares of this critical habitat - that's 11% of the world's seagrass - can be found in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef.
Seagrass meadows are vital to the health of the Reef. They filter nutrients and sediment, serve as nurseries for fish and shellfish, pull carbon out of our atmosphere and provide food for endangered species like turtles and dugongs.
The Great Barrier Reef's seagrass meadows have suffered heavy losses from pollution and climate change. Increasingly, severe storms have battered meadows, decimating ecosystems that are essential for the survival of the region's marine life.
Green sea turtle feeding on a seagrass meadow.
#How can we protect the seagrass ecosystem?
The Great Barrier Reef Foundation is dedicated to reversing this trend and restoring the Reef's seagrass meadows. By protecting and restoring seagrass, we can boost the region's ability to filter pollutants from the water, significantly improving habitats and overall Reef health.
In 2024, together with our partner CQUniversity's Coastal Marine Ecosystems Research Centre (CMERC) and Reef Traditional Owners, we developed the SeaGrow nursery, the world's largest purpose-built seagrass restoration nursery, in Gladstone to help restore seagrass ecosystems and enhance the resilience of the Great Barrier Reef.
CMERC Director Professor Emma Jackson said: "The nursery serves as a pilot for large-scale, seed-based seagrass restoration across the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem.
"This facility aims to significantly boost efforts to repair and enhance degraded seagrass meadows along the Australian coastline, which are crucial for the health of the Reef."
A seagrass flower picking event at Curtis Island.
#Volunteers crucial to seagrass restoration success
Seagrass restoration starts with the very manual task of collecting the seagrass flowers and seeds.
"We need to collect enough seagrass seed to supply the entire SeaGrow operation," said Emma. "As you can imagine our needs are immense. The amount of seed we collect needs to be sufficient to fulfill our research restoration work on the Reef's seagrass meadows, investigating the most productive ways to grow and restore seagrass."
Gathering the amount of seagrass seeds required is impossible without the help of a legion of volunteers. Between August and November, volunteers from the local community and partner organisations have been venturing out to the vast seagrass meadows sheltered inside the islands beyond Gladstone Harbour to painstakingly pick and fill their buckets with seagrass flowers and seeds.
#Stocking SeaGrow nurseries
These dedicated volunteers play a direct role in helping the Reef. By collecting the elusive little seagrass flowers hidden in plain sight across the broad expanse of seagrass meadows, they're building the seed stock that will fuel future restoration efforts.
"The nurseries use aquaria to grow seagrass plants to help restore damaged seagrass meadows," said Will Hamill, Director of Islands and Coasts at the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.
"It's here that the collected seagrass flowers are stored until the seeds naturally drop out. These seeds are then dispersed back into the bay to restore areas where seagrass is struggling to recover.
"The more seeds we collect, the more we ensure a robust genetic diversity in the nursery, which goes a long way to help to create healthier seagrass meadows. If we can get these nurseries up and running and producing seeds, we will need to rely less on wild harvest, which is a key goal of the nursery."
Close up of a single seagrass seed, which has the ability to grow hectares of seagrass from this one seed alone.
#Advancing seagrass restoration science
The seeds collected are also used to help advance our understanding of seagrass restoration science.
It's essential to investigate how we can improve seagrass restoration techniques, for example optimising the conditions to ensure that the highest number of seeds possible are germinating into seedlings and discovering the best growing conditions for these seedlings to producing resilient healthy adult plants.
Restoration experiments and large-scale trials are also critical to learn how to best scale-up seagrass restoration across the Great Barrier Reef.
Every flower picked by the team of volunteers makes a real difference to the Reef, helping protect habitats for turtles, dugongs and other marine species, while supporting the Reef's ability to capture carbon and improve water quality.
The SeaGrow project is supported by funding from Coles. Thank you to CMERC and all the volunteers, including those from our partners Coles, Chubb and AECOM who rolled up their sleeves at Pelican Banks to help collect seagrass flowers that will power the next wave of restoration research, and to our supporting partners Lendlease and XXXX who are helping SeaGrow turn small seeds into a big future for the Reef.
Restoring seagrass meadows
Regenerating and protecting critical ecosystems
