The Project Seagrass team have had another busy summer of seagrass seed collections! This year collections took place in Yarmouth, Ryde, and Bembridge on the Isle of Wight in the Solent, and in Porthdinllaen in North Wales. Find out more about how this summer’s collections went: Solent Seed Collection |
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
The Project Seagrass team have had another busy summer of seagrass seed collections! This year collections took place in Yarmouth, Ryde, and Bembridge on the Isle of Wight in the Solent, and in Porthdinllaen in North Wales. Find out more about how this summer’s collections went: Solent Seed Collection | 11th–17th July 2025 Day 1 The team arrived safely on the Isle of Wight on the 11th July to lovely sunny weather! We installed our keep net at Cowes Harbour – this is where the seagrass seeds are stored following daily seed collections ahead of being transported to Project Seagrass HQ at the end of the week where they are processed. Day 2 The Dive team headed out to Ryde Bay. After completing man over-board drills the divers entered the water to begin collecting seeds. The team managed 90 minutes underwater before the tide turned into too difficult conditions for the divers. The Intertidal team delivered the first Community Seed Collection event of the week. Today’s collection was at Yarmouth where we were joined by 5 volunteers. Hannah and Emma carried out a meadow health survey. Senior Science Officer and Solent Lead Anouska Mendzil collecting seagrass seeds in Yarmouth Volunteer snorkelers gathered on the beach at Yarmouth for a seed collection briefing Day 3 A hot but successful dive trip in Ryde Bay for the Dive Team! Today we had two pairs of divers in the water. The first pair completed a seagrass meadow assessment and then joined the second pair who were solely focused on seed collection. The team and the boat were working really well together, however unfortunately the weather was not in the team’s favour leading to a switch to shore diving for the rest of the week. The Intertidal Team delivered the second Community Seed Collection event of the week. Today’s event took place in Ryde. The team were joined by 8 volunteers including some repeat attendees from yesterday’s event. We were joined by photographer Francesca Page and colleagues from the University of Groningen/The Seagrass Consortium. Alongside the seed collection, Hannah and Ele carried out a survey of the meadow. Day 4 The Dive Team were joined by two new volunteer divers today, Ellie and Carly. Due to the weather conditions, the team were unable to go boat diving and instead went shore diving at Yarmouth Bay. Lots of seeds were collected making it another very successful day. The Intertidal Team were back at Ryde this morning for the third Community Seed Collection event of the week. Today we were joined by repeat volunteers photographer Francesca Page and colleagues from the University of Groningen/The Seagrass Consortium. Following the seed collection, members of the team met with our partners at Hampshire and Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust. Diver entering the water for seed collection Dive team aboard Gwen, preparing for seed collection Day 5 Today the Dive Team surveyed the seagrass meadow at Yarmouth and completed another seed collection. It was another blow out for the boat but a good opportunity to run through the shore diving protocol! The Intertidal Team were back at Yarmouth for a morning seed collection. Today the team were joined by members of The Seagrass Consortium. In the afternoon The Seagrass Consortium met to discuss collaboration and alignment. Days 6 & 7 The Dive team recovered Gwen before heading to Bembridge to determine if this could be another suitable site for shore diving. It ultimately wasn’t but a useful exercise! The Intertidal team delivered their final snorkel seed collection of the week. This collection took place at Bembridge and we were again joined by members of The Seagrass Consortium from the University of Groningen, Sea Rangers, and Office Français de la Biodiversité. The remainder of the day was spent preparing for our travel day back to Project Seagrass HQ. On the morning of our departure we collected the seagrass seeds from the keep net before heading back to South Wales where the seeds are now being processed. Members of the Project Seagrass team at Bembridge with members of The Seagrass Consortium Solent seagrass seeds retrieved from the keepnet and ready to travel back to Project Seagrass HQ North Wales Seed Collection | 26th July – 4th August Day 1 The team arrived safely in North Wales and headed straight to the beach at Porthdinllaen to set up Cabin Griff. We supported an initial seed collection event, providing shore cover for volunteers from our Seagrass Ocean Rescue partner WWF. Day 2 On Day 2 the Dive team launched Gwen and carried out meadow surveys. The Intertidal team had our first Community Seed Collection event. We were joined by partners from Pen Llŷn a’r Sarnau Special Area of Conservation and Ocean Wildlife Artist Oli Leger who brought his new artwork ‘Ambassador’ which he introduced to attendees. Project Seagrass vessel Gwen being prepared for deployment Ocean Wildlife Artist Oli Leger introducing his artwork Ambassador to people on the beach Day 3 Today the Dive Team installed the keep net and HOBO logger and carried out their first seed collection. Our Ambassador Jake joined the Dive team – today the divers collected 13kg of seeds! The Intertidal Team delivered another successful Community Seed Collection event. In the afternoon several members of the team attended a celebration event hosted by North Wales Wildlife Trust and Pen Llŷn a’r Sarnau Special Conservation Area. Storyteller and National Seagrass Action Plan project Manager Carl delivered a fantastic storytelling session. Day 4 Another successful day for the Dive team! 29kg of seagrass seeds collected today!!! Today the Intertidal team were joined by volunteers from WWF and our Seagrass Ocean Rescue programme funders the National Lottery Community Fund. After the volunteer session we were joined by Deputy First Minister Huw Irranca-Davies who joined us on the beach to collect seeds and learn more about the programme. Volunteers collecting seagrass seeds in Porthdinllaen North Wales WWF staff members collecting seeds in Porthdinllaen Days 5-10 The Boat team continued to carry out daily
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.
