Project Seagrass celebrates opening of new Lab
Last month marked the opening of a newly constructed laboratory facility at Project Seagrass’ headquarters in Bridgend, South Wales. Project Seagrass CEO Leanne Cullen-Unsworth said: “We’re delighted to be able to launch this fantastic new facility within our existing working space in Bridgend. Thanks to generous support from funders who share our core values, volunteers who supported the build, and a committed and passionate core team, we now have a functional in-house lab space that will contribute to advancing the science needed for scaled environmental recovery.” The creation of the facility was made possible thanks to the generosity of supporters Greenwood Place, the Hartwood Trust, and the Suggitt family who attended the official opening event hosted by the Project Seagrass team on 2nd July. Laura Suggitt said, “Seeing the Henry Suggitt Laboratory opened after years of dedicated hard work, fundraising, and commitment from the amazing team at Project Seagrass was a dream come true. It is a space that I can imagine my brother would have loved – which makes it all the more special. I know great things are going to happen here – the future of seagrass conservation and research is in safe hands!” The multi-functional workspace will enable a range of small-scale experiments to be carried out on site, alongside species identification, seed processing, sample preparation and storage, and maintenance tasks. The Lab will play an important role in Project Seagrass’ ongoing research work which underpins the organisation’s approach to seagrass restoration and conservation efforts across the UK and internationally. It will also complement the existing facilities at Project Seagrass HQ including the organisation’s large-scale seed processing systems. The space will add further educational value to Project Seagrass’ work with university students from across the UK who will be able to utilise the space as part of project work during their year in industry with the organisation. More details on year in industry placements can be found here. Project Seagrass is extremely grateful for the generosity and shared vision of our funders which has made the construction of the Lab possible. We would also like to thank Rob & Sam Petts (RP Property Maintenance) who volunteered their time to support the build.
Seagrass Nursery News
July 2025 Emily Yates, Seagrass Nursery Lead Introduction It’s that time of year when the sun is shining and seagrass meadows around the UK are filled with flowering shoots, laden with maturing seeds. Much of July has been dominated by seagrass seed collection fieldwork and preparing for the seeds to be processed in our purpose-built systems at Project Seagrass HQ. We’ve also been fortunate to have a very special visitor down to see the work happening at the site. Global Seagrass Nursery Network Seminar 8 We hosted the 8th Global Seagrass Nursery Network Seminar this month. A total of 29 attendees from 22 affiliations in 13 countries joined the seminar to hear talks from the UK, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Eastern Australia, Portugal and Western Australia. The overarching theme of a number of the talks were on failures with the aim to collectively grow from our experiences and lessons learnt. If you would like to know more about the Network and to participate, please contact: nurserynetwork@projectseagrass.org Seed collection for 2025 – Isle of Wight Seed Collection In mid-July I had the opportunity to head down to the Isle of Wight to join the team for seed picking. In total we snorkelled over three donor meadows across the Island collecting intertidal seed spathes while our dive team collected subtidal seeds at the same sites. There were a few early mornings where we were joined by enthusiastic volunteers as well as being joined by members of The Seagrass Consortium. In total our teams collected 57.5 kg of seed material which is now being processed at our facility at Project Seagrass HQ. The trip was also a good opportunity to catch up with some of the many groups we work collaboratively with. There was not one, but two Seagrass Consortium meetings held to discuss aligning and testing restoration methods across Europe. I also join Anouska (Senior Science Officer for the Solent) in meeting with Global Seagrass Nursery Network Members from the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust where we discussed seed collection and importantly, plans for storage. North Wales Seed Collection Abi David Between the 26th – 31st July, I was up in North Wales collecting seeds at Porthdinllaen beach. Saturday was our longest day as we travelled up from Project Seagrass HQ and headed straight to the beach where we met with our WWF partners for our first seed collection session. After a successful first session of wading and snorkelling, we headed to our accommodation just down the road, where I was delighted to find a small farm onsite. I spent a good portion of my free time hugging chickens. On Sunday we had our second seed collection of the week with partners from PLAS SAC. We were also joined by artist Oli Leger, who brought his piece ‘Ambassador’, which is inspired by seagrass and the communities it supports. On Monday we had an early 5am start for our third seed collection. Despite the early hours, people were in good spirits and we managed to collect a good haul of seeds. The dive team installed a keepnet – where the collected seeds were kept during fieldwork – as well as a HOBO logger to track temperature and light data for the meadow. The dive team also carried out their first seed collection of subtidal seeds and collected 13kg of spathes. Unfortunately, on Tuesday the weather took a turn for the worse and some of us had to spend the morning holding down the event shelter. For this tide we met with more project partners from WWF and funders from the National Lottery Community Fund who assisted with seed collection. The dive team managed to beat their total from the previous day by collecting a massive 29kg of spathes! Our last community seed collection was Wednesday morning where we rounded up the week with another successful session of collection before the team split and some headed back home, whilst the dive and snorkel teams continued collecting for another week. Pendine Seed Collection Just like in the field we’ve been harvesting seed laden spathes from plants in the nursery. We recently noticed that spathes collected from our polytunnel had dropped their seeds! Abi has started taking measurements of widths, lengths, and seeds per ml to compare to the seeds produced by wild donor meadows. In total we’ve collected and sown 1,853 seeds in total, 1,029 are the first generation (where the parents’ plants are grown in the nursery from wild stock seeds) and 824 are second generation (where the parents plants are grown from seeds produced in the nursery). We have also had a small number of seeds from the outside pond first generation too! These have all been sown and we’re monitoring for the first signs of emergence – hopefully some little seagrasses will appear soon! Cardiff Fieldwork Emma (Senior Science Officer for South and West Wales) and I headed out for a day of fieldwork at our Cardiff site. While there, we assessed the nursery transplants and DIS hugs from the planting back in March/April. We’ve been looking at optimal methods for out-planting from the nursery, comparing plants moved out in large and small coir, hemp bags, indoor and outdoor transplants). Whilst there was a loss from the original number of transplants planted there were plants stoically persisting. Local MP Visit We had the pleasure of welcoming Ann Davies, our local MP for Caerfyrddin (Carmarthen) down to the site. Ann joined us for a tour of the seagrass nursery and wider site to hear about how our project has developed over the years and our big ambitions for the site. It was a great to chat to Ann and her team about the importance of creating green and blue jobs in rural communities in Wales.