World Seagrass Day

In honor of World Seagrass Day , The UW News asked Jennifer Ruesink, UW professor of biology, to explain what seagrass is and what makes the seagrasses in Washington unique. Shown here is seagrass on the northeast side of Willapa Bay.   March 1st is World Seagrass Day, which celebrates the flowering plants that look like blades of grass waving in our oceans and in Puget Sound. The United Nations created World Seagrass Day as an opportunity “to promote and facilitate actions for the conservation of seagrasses in order to contribute to their health and development.”  Jennifer Ruesink , University of Washington professor of biology, studies the relationship between the environment and marine organisms, including eelgrass , the primary species of seagrass that resides in the waters in and around Washington. In honor of World Seagrass Day , UW News asked Ruesink to explain what seagrass is and what makes the seagrasses in Washington unique .  Seagrass is “wonderful” in...

Seagrasses, distinct from seaweeds, are flowering plants that form vibrant underwater meadows. Filtering pollutants, cycling nutrients, sequestering carbon and providing habitat for a rich diversity of marine life, they help maintain the health of coastal seas. In the shallow waters off Johor Bahru’s rapidly urbanizing shoreline in Peninsular Malaysia, a busy assemblage of crabs, marine worms and mollusks are a sign of recovery. Just over a decade ago, the wafting seagrass meadow they now inhabit had been laid waste by development. In 2014, dredgers working on a massive land reclamation project to build a “Forest City” at the tip of the peninsula had dispersed plumes of sediment across the Merambong Shoal, one of Malaysia’s most extensive seagrass beds . While the Department of Environment recognized the harm and issued a stop-work order later that year, the damage was done: Roughly 10 hectares (25 acres) of seagrass meadow had been destroyed. To try to rectify the situation, the d...