Please invest in Our Daily Planet today, by making a one time or monthly contribution.
We do not charge our readers a subscription fee for our content. We want to continue to grow our readership, particularly among millennials and public servants. Voluntary contributions from readers will help us employ interns and freelance journalists, expand our content, and reach a larger audience.
If you make a contribution of $150 or more, you will become an official “Friend of the Planet” and receive a Friend of the Planet T-shirt or water bottle.
Our Daily Planet is a daily morning email (M-F) to keep you informed of the stories shaping our environment. If these issues matter to you, we’d like to be the best ten minutes of your morning.
Last summer, Florida created its first aquatic preserve in over 30 years. The Nature Coast Aquatic Preserve protects about 400,000 acres of seagrass just north of Tampa on Florida’s Gulf coast. These are part of the Gulf of Mexico’s largest seagrass bed and borders other existing preserves, creating a chain of protected ocean areas. Florida has the most seagrass diversity in the country, Huffington Post reports, with 2.5 million acres composed of seven different species. Protected aquatic areas are especially important in Florida, where runoff full of nitrogen and other nutrient pollution has led to devastating algae blooms in recent years with significant negative economic and environmental impacts.
Why this Matters: Seagrass is both one of the most important and most threatened ecosystems on earth. In Florida’s Gulf, it provides food and shelter for all sorts of marine mammals, from manatees to stone crabs. It also underpins much of the regional economy: activities depending on seagrass like fishing and manatee-watching generate more than $600 million annually and support more than 10,000 jobs, according to Pew.The underwater grasses also clean sediment from the water and is an extremely effective carbon sink. Protecting seagrass beds could be incorporated into the broader goal of protecting 30% of land and water by 2030, both protecting habitat and absorbing carbon.
Tampa’s Seagrass Success Story
Earlier in the 20th century, Tampa Bay’s seagrass was on the decline. The Bay lost nearly half of its seagrass by the late 1980s, when the area finally took action to protect them. By setting stricter standards for wastewater treatment plants, the amount of nitrogen dropped dramatically. Now, the underwater area has more than 40,000 acres of seagrass cover, more than was there in 1950. Not all restoration efforts are such a remarkable success, but research by the University of South Florida and the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission found that almost every seagrass restoration site in Florida supported some level of seagrass, even if the restored beds weren’t as robust as their original beds.
Farther south, in the southernmost part of Sarasota Bay, it’s a different story. Increasing development and population growth led to insufficient wastewater treatment (hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater were dumped in the bay) that has destroyed the seagrass meadows there. And it’s hard to restore these vital seagrass meadows once they are totally gone, which is demonstrated by the struggle to halt seagrass decline in areas like Sarasota Bay and Biscayne Bay. This is why the work protecting the seagrass beds to the north is so important — but it also requires buy-in from community residents, government, businesses that contribute to water pollution.
UN Report Calls for Seagrass Protection
Last fall, the United Nations published an environmental report about the value of seagrass and calling for its increased protection. About a third of global seagrass has been destroyed since the late 19th century as a result of compounding pressure from nutrient pollution, climate change, and coastal development. The good news is that protecting seagrass ecosystems can help us take on the climate crisis. The report highlights eight key benefits, all at play in Florida as well as around the world, including their role as a nursery for fisheries, a buffer against coastal erosion, and a filtration system for sediment and excess nutrients in the water.
UNESCO has launched a new program to collect, analyze, and monitor environmental DNA (AKA eDNA) to better understand biodiversity at its marine World Heritage sites. Scientists will collect genetic material from fish cells, mucus, and waste across multiple locations along with eDNA from soil, water, and air. The two-year project will help experts assess […]
It’s about time we had a conversation about the birds and the bees…or in this case, the otters and the seagrass. A new study found that the ecological relationship between sea otters and the seagrass fields where they make their home is spurring the rapid reproduction of the plants. Otters dig up about 5% of […]
By Amy Lupica, ODP Daily Editor An abandoned oil tanker off the coast of Yemen is deteriorating rapidly, and experts say that a hull breach could have far-reaching environmental impacts and threaten millions of people’s access to food and water supplies. The FSO SAFER tanker holds 1.1 million barrels of oil — more than four […]
Subscribe to the email that top lawmakers, renowned scientists, and thousands of concerned citizens turn to each morning for the latest environmental news and analysis.
Want the lastest climate news summarized for you each morning?
Our Daily Planet is your daily dose of the stories shaping our world and the ways that you can take action. From the climate crisis to the protection of biodiversity, if these issues matter to you then please subscribe & stay informed!
Your privacy is Important! We promise never to use your email address to send you spam or advertisements.