Seagrass restoration is world's largest

Clara H.Vaughn - 

Several miles east of Oyster in South Bay, volunteers are performing what looks like underwater yoga.

Wearing goggles and snorkels, they dip and walk through the shallow waterway, collecting seeds to replenish a vital plant absent for decades.

Each summer, they come from as far as Richmond and Charlottesville to take part in the world's largest seagrass restoration project, mobilized by The Nature Conservancy in partnership with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the Virginia Coastal Management Program.

"Without all these hands to pick this grass, we wouldn't get as many seeds," said Bo Lusk, marine steward with the conservancy.

Planting close to 400 acres of eelgrass on the Eastern Shore's seaside has spread, resulting in 4,500 acres of thriving underwater beds.

Lusk described the beds as vast, underwater meadows, providing vital habitat to bay scallops and other marine organisms.

"Scallops need eelgrass," Lusk said. "It really helps them avoid predators for the first part of their lives."

Before the beds were destroyed in the 1930s, scallop harvests reached more than one million pounds annually -- worth $14 million in today's economy.

With the restoration of seagrass beds, scientists can also hope to restore the scallop population.

Other creatures, like crabs, clams and small fish, call the beds home, providing food for larger fish and waterfowl.

Eelgrass beds also help reduce sediment in the water.

"Water flows over an eelgrass bed, and that water slows down so the sediment settles out of it," Lusk said. "It helps keep things clear."

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