Why Seagrass?
Seagrass is an important organism for many different species and for a variety of reasons. Some of the top reasons are listed on the right. They are categorized in; 1. Nature; 2. Water Quality; 3. Climate Change and; 4. Humans.
Some cool seagrass facts
Seagrass can absorb carbon up to 35x faster than Amazonian rainforest
A single acre alone can support over a million species of organisms.
Seagrass fields are highly threatened. Each hour, two football fields worth of seagrass disappear!
While seagrass only occurs on 0.1% of the seafloor, it is responsible for 12% of the organic carbon buried in the ocean.
There is one seagrass plant in the Mediterranean Sea that is over 6.000 years old!
The project
Although the laboratory experiments are done at the Ghent University, everything that is discovered will be used on Texel, The Netherlands, in a new nature reserve. This nature reserve will create a new dune area along the 'Prins Hendrik dike'. This location will be a new stopover for migrating birds, a new hotspot for biodiversity and of course a new location for seagrass to grow! Besides this, it is a perfect example of the concept 'Building with Nature'. The new dune area will not only be beneficial to birds, but it will also help keep the feet of Texel's inhabitants dry.
In order to let seagrass grow is this new area, a lot of information on growing seagrass is needed. This is the reason why there is an initial phase of laboratory experiments before actually transplanting seagrass to this area. These experiments will focus on what the best substrate for growth, stability and recruitment is in terms for the new seagrass plants.
What did I do?
During this Professional Practice I did a lot of different things. Firstly, I helped out with finding some good literature in order to start the experiments in a proper manner. After that I helped out with the experimental setup by cutting filter material, making sure the lighting was installed correctly, cleaning and sterilizing the sediment that will be used, preparing different swatches of the substrate materials that will be used in all the experiments and setting up the basins for the first, smaller experiment.
Besides that I was able to join a fieldtrip to Texel, The Netherlands, where we collected the first water, meiofauna, and macrofauna samples. After arriving back in Ghent one of the tasks that needed to be completed was identifying and counting meiofauna in the samples we took, which was a new skill for me.
Halfway through the internship the seagrass plants arrived in Belgium. This meant that we had to set up the acclimation tanks and create a protocol to start off the first experiments. I had never worked with seagrass in such a close proximity so far, which led to me learning a lot of new information. Another skill that I could add to my current knowledge is how to measure and mark seagrass plants in order to measure growth over time.
Time for some fun!
Click the link down below to take you to 'Seagrass Jump' ☺
If you want to restart te game, just press the green flag.
