Eelgrass Restoration in the San Juan Islands

Our restoration efforts are focused on scaling up the practices and capacity associated with harvesting, storing and planting large volumes of viable eelgrass seed. In addition, we work to facilitate the transplanting of mature eelgrass plants when possible.

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Restoration through seeding has been proven in different global settings as a cost-effective approach to large scale success. Seeds are abundant each summer in “flowering heads” of the eelgrass shoot. These flowering heads are collected by hand prior to the seeds falling out and dispersing. They are transported either to a planting site while still contained within their spathe for planting through a method known as Buoy Deployed Seeding; or taken to our Eelgrass Cultivation System at Friday Harbor Labs for processing and winter storage.

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Seed processing at the Eelgrass Cultivation System consists of allowing the seeds to mature and drop from their spathes into a system of holding tanks and continuous fresh flow of seawater. The ECS serves as an eelgrass nursery to cultivate as much healthy seed stock as possible, store over winter, and prep for planting the following spring. We are currently working on increasing the volume of the ECS in order to host tens of thousands of eelgrass flowering heads and hundreds of thousands of seeds, over a 10x increase from the size we have been working with since 2019.

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Seeds stored over winter can be kept dormant through a cold stratification process, and also tested for overall seed viability. After winter storage, seed stock is brought to restoration sites to be planted through one of several different planting methods. These methods include dispersal seeding, injection seeding, hessian bag deployment, and seed buoy deployment.