UPDATE ON SEAGRASS PROJECT

The season for transplanting seagrass is now over with the shortening days and increased likelihood of bad weather.

This year has been one of increasing our knowledge base and setting in place the systems and personnel required to carry out our aims. This has included bringing on board a project manager to coordinate the required resources, locating a base from which we can work, selecting the specialised equipment and obtaining the required permissions for harvesting and transplanting.

Unfortunately all of this activity has taken far longer than anticipated meaning we have not been able to start harvesting this season. However with the systems in place we are now in position to have a full years planting starting in the spring.

Having carried out surveys we have identified our donor bed and received clearance to start the harvesting for transplanting. Due to the depths involved this harvesting will be carried out by divers as will the transplanting.

We intend to carry out further surveys to increase our knowledge of seagrass beds around Kintyre and hope to be able to carry these out during the winter period as and when the weather permits.

In addition we had a visit from St Andrews University who are interested in exploring ‘blue carbon’ on the seabed where our seagrass is. This is a measure of the amount of carbon being sequeste in the sea floor by plant life. Some samples were taken and are currently being analysed and we look forward to these results and to working further with them.