Last weekend, students on the Lady Maryland took part in an eelgrass bed restoration project on Nile’s Beach in Gloucester. The students suited up in snorkels and wetsuits and waded through shallow water, harvesting eelgrass, recording data, and exploring sub tidal marine invertebrates.
The group met up with Ellen Link, the Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator for the Great Marsh Resiliency Partnership’s eelgrass project and other volunteers. After a lesson about the ecosystem values of eelgrass and what threats it faces, the team got to work.
The task: to harvest eelgrass (Zostera marina) from the chilly subtidal waters and record data on this important marine plant so that it could be transplanted in Plum Island Sound. It was a great example of collaboration driven by skills and interests.
The harvest eelgrass has since been planted in an area north of Gloucester with the hopes of improving habitat, stabilizing sediments, and removing excess carbon.
We were lucky to join this project, and we had a lot of fun in the water and helping out where we could!
This work is funded by a National Wildlife Foundation grant (“Restoring New England’s Largest Saltmarsh: Multi-Benefit Resiliency Enhancement”) and is conducted under the guidance of Coastal Ecologist Dr. Alyssa Novak of Boston University and Peter Phippen, coastal coordinator for the Massachusetts Bays National Estuary Program.
This work is funded by a National Wildlife Foundation grant (“Restoring New England’s Largest Saltmarsh: Multi-Benefit Resiliency Enhancement”) and is conducted under the guidance of Coastal Ecologist Dr. Alyssa Novak of Boston University and Peter Phippen, coastal coordinator for the Massachusetts Bays National Estuary Program.
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