3 November 2024

Chance to play hands-on role in restoring marine habitats

Visitors to the Deep in Hull are being invited to make seagrass seed bags to be planted at Spurn Point as part of Wilder Humber’s third annual Super Seagrass Festival.

A pioneering partnership between Ørsted and Yorkshire & Lincolnshire Wildlife Trusts, Wilder Humber’s ambitious five-year plan involves returning 40 hectares of lost biodiversity to the Humber estuary.

It trials a seascape-scale model, combining sand dune, saltmarsh, seagrass, and native oyster restoration to maximise conservation and biodiversity benefits. This event spotlights the conservation work that Wilder Humber is carrying out, alongside showcasing the importance of seagrass as a vital habitat for many marine species.

This year’s event will be held across the weekend of October 12-13 and will see members of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust team at the Deep encouraging visitors to make up hessian seed bags. At last year’s festival, some 2,000 seed bags were created over the course of the weekend, and it is hoped that this target will be surpassed this year.

Alongside seagrass seed bag making, at 11am, 1pm, and 3pm, guides from the Deep will be running Super Seagrass interactive workshops for visitors to learn more about how seagrass meadows positively affect the marine environment and how the plant stores carbon, helping to tackle climate change.

The Humber estuary once supported vast seagrass meadows across both banks, with records of dwarf seagrass covering more than 500 hectares at Spurn Point, and vast swathes from Grimsby to Cleethorpes. As a result of industrialisation of the estuary, and subsequent decline in water quality, disease, and coastal squeeze, the expansive seagrass beds deteriorated almost completely between the 1930s and 1980s.

Seagrass is the world’s only flowering plant capable of living in seawater and, globally, captures carbon up to 35 times faster than tropical rainforests, accounting for 10-18 per cent of total ocean carbon storage despite covering less than 0.1 per cent of the sea floor. Seagrass can also help protect the coast from damaging storms and erosion through dampening the force of waves and is very effective at removing pollutants from our waters.

In the UK, seagrass meadows are a vital habitat for marine life. They support biodiversity by providing essential nursery habitat for important fish species, such as bass and sand eel, and bird species such as Brent geese.

Andy van der Schatte Olivier, marine programme manager at Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, said: “We’ve already observed a rise in species making use of the Wilder Humber seagrass meadows at Spurn, including the critically endangered European eel.

“However, involving the local community in seagrass restoration efforts is essential for safeguarding this vital habitat in the years ahead. By collaborating to assemble seed bags, we can all play a hands-on role in restoring this crucial marine species and leave a meaningful legacy in the Humber. That’s why we’d love to see as many people as possible join us at this year’s Seagrass Festival.”

Katy Duke, chief executive officer at the Deep, said: “We are pleased to once again host this year’s Super Seagrass Festival in collaboration with Yorkshire Wildlife Trust.

“This event provides a unique opportunity to contribute to Wilder Humber’s important local conservation and restoration project. We look forward to engaging and inspiring our visitors to discover why seagrass is such a vital marine habitat, which needs our help to protect it.”