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Editorial
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Food for thoughtPS Updates
July 30, 2021

Ambition really is still critical for seagrass

Eight years ago sat on a roof top café at Swansea University we ambitiously set up a small marine conservation organisation called Project Seagrass. Swansea has always seemed a fitting place for Project Seagrass to start. After all it was deemed the ‘lovely ugly town’ by its most famous son, the poet Dylan Thomas. Thomas also went on to describe the place as the ‘graveyard of ambition’, a phrase that’s referred to in an artistic inscription outside the local train station by a more modern Swansea poet that states “Ambition is Critical”. The analogies to seagrass are striking, both entities…
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Editorial
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Guest Blog
April 7, 2021

An East African Marine Safari

By Sam Freeman In the summer of 2018, after finishing my penultimate year of my undergrad Marine & Freshwater Biology degree, I travelled to Watamu. Watamu is a small but beautiful coastal town just north of Mombasa, in Kenya – East Africa. Watamu is famous for its picturesque sandy-white beaches and tourist filled hotels dedicated to ecotourism. I volunteered on the marine programme at an environmental conservation NGO called A Rocha Kenya for two months. They are based right in the middle of East Africa’s oldest marine protected area, the Watamu Marine National Park (WMNP). The park covers a 10…
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Eve Uncles
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PS Updates
December 30, 2020

2020 : A Year In Review

As 2020 draws to a close, we look back on a year that has been nothing short of unusual. Despite the challenges, it has been a year for reflection, growth and innovation, and we believe there's never been more reason to work toward a brighter future. In the face of a pandemic, like everyone, Project Seagrass has had to adapt, but we've tried to continue our work, planting the final seeds in the two hectares of seagrass that represents the UK’s largest restoration project to date and forming relationships with like minded causes to work collaboratively in the fight against…
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Richard Lilley
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Awareness
November 15, 2020

A Life On Our Planet

“I’ve had an extraordinary life. It’s only now that I appreciate how extraordinary. As a young man, I felt I was out there in the wild, experiencing the untouched natural world – but it was an illusion. The tragedy of our time has been happening all around us, barely noticeable from day to day – the loss of our planet’s wild places, its biodiversity. I have been witness to this decline. A Life on Our Planet is my witness statement, and my vision for the future. It is the story of how we came to make this, our greatest mistake…
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Editorial
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Guest Blog
November 13, 2020

Seagrasses starred in Ocean Hackathon Mexico 2020

Written by Maru Bernal Last October 9th, the Ocean Hackathon® 2020 took place in Mexico City. This is an event in which multidisciplinary teams have access to international databases and have 48 hours to develop a pilot project or proof of concept that targets an ocean-related problem. This year’s event, organized by IFAL (French Institute of Latin America), had seagrasses as protagonists when the team called “Carbón ¡Oh no!” won the first place with a project that targeted seagrass beds conservation. In spite of their relevance and vulnerability, seagrass beds constitute one of the least protected ecosystems on the planet.…
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Richard Lilley
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Education
October 15, 2020

The role of seagrass meadows in promoting Ocean Literacy

Ocean Literacy is defined as ‘an understanding of the ocean’s influence on us and our influence on the ocean.’ There are Seven Principles of Ocean Literacy: The Earth has one big ocean with many features. The ocean and the life in the ocean shape the features of Earth. The ocean is a major influence on weather and climate. The ocean made the Earth habitable. The ocean supports a great diversity of life and ecosystems. The ocean and humans are inextricably interconnected. The ocean is largely unexplored. According to the Marine Biological Association (MBA) these seven Ocean Literacy ‘Principles’ were developed by hundreds of educators and scientists in the USA as a…
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Editorial
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Internships
October 8, 2020

Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve

Holy Island. A place with a rich history of monks, Vikings and saints. Nowadays Holy Island, also known as Lindisfarne, is a hotspot for tourists wishing to learn about British heritage or walk along the beautiful coastline. I only learnt just a few days prior to travelling up to Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve (Lindisfarne NNR) that as well as history, the mudflats there are also home to seagrass meadows! This was the reason for my journey from Swansea to the Northumberland, to help collect and transport seagrass seeds from the meadow at Lindisfarne back to Swansea. Our weekend team was…
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Editorial
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Internships
September 28, 2020

A fortnight in North Wales

My name is Emma and I am a marine biology undergraduate student at Swansea University. This summer I started a year long internship placement with Project Seagrass as part of my degree scheme and boy did I jump in at the deep end! My first experience was to be joining the team and volunteers in North Wales for a fortnight of picking seagrass seeds, and so on Saturday 1st August Evie and I made the 5 hour drive from Swansea to the Llŷn a’r Sarnau Special Area of Conservation. After settling in, it was early to bed as work was to…
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Benjamin Jones
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Food for thoughtOpinion
September 10, 2020

Communities are central to conservation

Earlier this week saw the release of the Edinburgh Declaration on post-2020 global biodiversity framework, a bold call to action urging Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity to work more closely with communities in order to meet 20 biodiversity goals set out in the Aichi accord, signed 10 years ago in in Nagoya, Japan. The vision set out in the post-2020 global biodiversity framework of “Living in harmony with nature”, and the 2030 mission as set out in the Zero Draft document make one thing pretty clear. Conserving biodiversity, for people and the planet, cannot happen without people. For…
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Benjamin Jones
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Food for thoughtOpinion
September 3, 2020

It’s an ill bird that fouls its own nest

Nearly 30,000 tonnes of sewage containing human waste is to enter the UK despite potential problems for human health. Yet, what stinks for me is that sewage and livestock waste are driving seagrass loss across the UK – we already have a problem, and we don’t need to exacerbate this. Back in 2018, we released a study documenting this problem and called on the government to make changes - but water companies, some farmers and the Government have not, and it would appear are still not, doing enough to address theses risks. Photo by Stijn te Strake on Unsplash While the…
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