My first trip to Snowdonia was in 2003. A tepid diarist at nine years old, two entries reveal my journey of Welsh discovery:
8th August 2003 (just had dinner): Tomorrow we are going on holiday to Wales apparently! At first I was like ‘oh great, ANOTHER boring hiking holiday!’ But then I heard there are loads of sheep and things and now cannot wait. I’m a weirdo!!
15th August 2003 (major problem): My feet hurt. Half of me wants to go home, half of me doesn’t. Sheep were nice. Also, am becoming a weather geek.
Sixteen years later, with a few Snowdon trips sprinkled in between, I was eager to return. There was just a slight issue – the train I was due to catch from Fishguard and Goodwick station to Porthmadog – the 11-hour train – had been suddenly cancelled that morning. I wouldn’t put it past Wales to halt all rail travel for a sheep that decided to nap on the tracks. Understandably, my immediate feeling was disappointment at not being able to relay the experience of passing through 45 stations along the iconic Cambrian Line. I wanted to sit by a smeary window like a lovesick poet. To bid a tidy ‘hwyl fawr!’ to Wales, as we ventured into England to Shrewsbury, before crossing back through Snowdonia National Park, arriving, daring and whimsical, at the wild Welsh coast. I wanted to be one of the little floating heads in a trio of carriages, racing through a fleeting landscape. And I wanted to at least attempt to pronounce: Pontypool, Tonfanau, Dyffryn Ardudwy and Penrhyndeudraeth, without spitting all over myself as we pulled into each station. But, alas, it was not meant to be.
Perched on the edge of the bed in the Goodwick B&B, I instinctively rang my dad, bending back the corners of the now-useless train ticket as the phone rang. My remaining options were few. Someone was expecting me to be suited and booted on a beach somewhere the following morning to see what I had come all this way for. Time was precious, and at some point, I also had to return home to work. For all its splendour, Wales is not blessed with the public transport system of, say, Hong Kong1 – and getting to Snowdonia without a car is tricky. Nor did I have time for, or fancied funding, a 100-mile hike or bike ride. A 500-hour bus journey at 2 miles per hour was not the vibe I envisaged for this trip.
But, thankfully, it turned out Dad was due to be driving up to Shrewsbury later in the week to visit my brother and his family. Convenient. And, unravelling himself from my little finger, he gallantly offered to travel a couple of days early via the ‘scenic route’. He said if I could get myself up to Cardigan Bay by the afternoon, I could hitch a ride up the final stretch to Porthmadog. ‘We’ll make a trip of it!’ he said. I could already hear him stuffing his sleeping bag into its sack. No, it wasn’t the lowest carbon option, but it was the best I could do.
I don’t remember much about the cycle to Cardigan; 25 miles of nauseating ascents and descents, following National Cycle Routes 47 and 82, across Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. Amid the cheer of a sunny morning, I soon relished the absence of train time and platform changes. The air was hot, and my eyes stung from sweat as I climbed the infamously steep A487 out of Fishguard Harbour. A roadside verge, bright green and wide, had been left to fend for itself. Grasses swayed in the breeze, and the absence of traffic allowed pollinators to steal the soundtrack. Pulling off the road and letting my bike fall, I lay down briefly on the grass, closing my eyes and catching my breath. White clouds skimmed the sky like fish darting to the shallows. Respite, indeed.
With a rucksack that felt several kilos heavier than the previous day, I felt encumbered. The back of my head repeatedly collided with hordes of snacks rammed in the lid. So, I favoured a downwards gaze, legs spinning furiously, my possessions constantly striving to throw me off balance. Some descents were so steep I had to dismount and walk, to save from toppling over the handlebars.
An idyllic village sandwiched a much-needed gap between the main road and another grossly steep hill. Shirtless and mowing a lawn near the church, a smiley, older man flagged me down and asked if I was quite alright before warning me to shift into my lowest gear – and best of luck with the rest of the ride. ‘Argh! A hefty one, mind!’ he chuckled, shaking his head and restarting the mower. I had come to recognise that a young, panting woman on a bike, alone and overshadowed by an enormous rucksack, for some reason gives the impression that something dire must have happened and surely she must need help.
A Land Rover overtook, its engine roaring as it met the incline. Through the tree tunnel, I pretended its disappearing engine was me and my bike, such power we generated together. But, once my front wheel started to lift off the ground with the sheer angle of it, my legs surrendered.
Let’s digress – and take a deep breath. Exxxhale. Now, repeat that twice. Breathing feels good, doesn’t it? If anything, pretty priceless. Even better – two out of three of those breaths were enabled by the ocean, which is very noble of it. The staggering fact is that more than 50 per cent of the oxygen that humans, plants and animals breathe is born within the minute architecture of phytoplankton, the bygone solar factories that drift the braids of ocean currents. Absorbing carbon, water and sunlight en route, they convert it into food and release oxygen as a by-product. The life story that evolution wrote for these microscopic plants, algae and bacteria is the genesis of our planet. It is the ancient gift that enabled our ascension to the top. No coincidence, then, that photosynthesis is one of the first scientific processes taught at school, and flowers are among the first shapes we commit to paper. It makes sense, the very bottom of Earth’s pile being a wise place to start. And, should we care to notice, the grassy meadows, forests and woody assemblages that shape our story are not restricted to a terrestrial existence, for they have underwater counterparts. Vast, untaught and unchartered.
These are marine vegetated habitats. Mangrove swamps, salt marshes, kelp forests and seagrass beds cover less than 0.2 per cent of the ocean surface area, yet harbour 50 per cent of the carbon buried in the global seabed. Seagrass beds alone account for at least 10 per cent of that global carbon storage. Marine vegetated habitats are the submarine fleet of the natural world. Our ‘humble servants, beneath the sea’2 authorising the web of chromatic, pelagic life – for which we lack time. I enjoy the irony, given that we – humankind – would be shrivelled, lifeless lumps without them. An arresting image.
Britain’s story of seagrass in the last decade is as humble as the plants themselves. Co-founded by Dr Ben Jones (or @BoardshortsBen on Twitter) and Dr Richard ‘RJ’ Lilley in 2013 after their master’s degrees, Project Seagrass is a marine conservation charity that sees the unseen and gives it a voice. Safe to say, their work in making us less ignorant of the sea and its secret garden is astonishing. Described as ‘marine powerhouses’ and repeatedly saluted as critical to global coastal marine ecosystems’ health, meadows of underwater grass are not something to muck about with.
Nicknamed marine conservation’s ‘ugly duckling’, what seagrass beds economise for in our imagination (picture a field of grass underwater – it is what it says on the tin) they redeem in captivation. Until I wrote this book, I was among the millions who were unaware of the submerged meadows that border the coastline of the British Isles, let alone even remotely awake to its importance and plight. Foxes were braver. Orcas felt bigger. Woodland, more tangible. But, the very idea of submerged meadows that annually flower and go to seed summer after summer, that have teams of crustacean pollinators and that house an entire world of dependent life, soon reeled me in hook, line and sinker. Some meadows are so vast that they could cover more than 400,000 rugby pitches. How these have passed us by for so long is a mystery. But I’m in the market for it.
Seagrasses are the only genuinely marine flowering plants in the UK. Seventy-two species of seagrass exist worldwide, on every continent except Antarctica. They vary dramatically, both in size and rates of carbon burial. A researcher once beautifully compared Mediterranean seagrasses to oak trees, dwarfing the fronds of further north. Three Zostera species of seagrass dominate UK waters: common (often known as eelgrass), dwarf and narrow-leafed. Like its terrestrial cousin, seagrass favours a sheltered and stable environment, growing in shallow bays, absorbing sunlight and photosynthesising away just like any other plant. Veins within the leaf tissue act as highways, shuttling the sugar and oxygen produced by photosynthesis around the plant. Pockets of air within those veins act as tiny buoyancy-aids – lifting the leaves to the water and keeping them from sinking.
Seagrass is both the native and the outlander. Marginalised to the extreme. Just how many seagrass beds flank the UK coastline remains unclear. But, what we do know is that the meadows that linger are regarded by scientists as in poor condition. At times, they’ve ranked among the worst in the world. Tissue nitrogen levels have been at least 75 per cent higher than the global average. As a general rule, excess nitrogen in plants is not good news. Stunted root growth, dehydration, and surrounding water pollution are just some of the stressors that a given plant will endure in these circumstances. I think it’s fair to admit those people working to protect seagrass have cause for a monster headache.
But good work is being done – and fast. One of the continual challenges in conservation is generating awareness across a broad audience, hoping to inform good decisions. How can we expect people to muck in and help if they don’t know the score? If they don’t know what or why they’re helping? Apps like SeagrassSpotter encourage and enlist public support in mapping locations of seagrass beds throughout the British Isles – so limited is the knowledge of their modern-day whereabouts. There have even been studies investigating the role of psychology in finding ways to defeat the problem of seagrass’s repressed public image! I mean, come on – seriously? Desperation is growing – and with good reason.
The decline of this habitat is of mounting international concern. The latest figures looking at historic maps suggest the global oceans could be mourning the loss of 92 per cent of their seagrass. Disease, extreme weather and physical disturbance from us are the main offenders – but we’ll talk about that later. On its website, Project Seagrass equates this loss to the size of two football fields disappearing every hour – since 1980. And we continue to lose an estimated 7 per cent of seagrass around the world every year.
Restoring seagrass meadows worldwide alone will contribute to reaching 10 of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. In its classic 1994 paper (you’ll hear my gasp from the Congo if you’ve actually read this), the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (BAP) identified seagrass beds as a habitat to prioritise. This is surely the least it could do for a habitat that absorbs and buries carbon up to 40 times faster than a pristine tropical rainforest. This oft-quoted ‘blue carbon’ is the underdog we need to seriously start cheering for, as based on that estimate, the UK would need 70 hectares of tropical rainforest to match this unlikely carbon-sapping skill. A situation where one might suggest that you do the maths.
Conservationists are increasingly recognising a tendency for their practice to take a ‘speciesist’ approach, using the celebrity of puffins, for example, to boost public intrigue. An attitude that focuses on saving one species at a time. To a certain extent, this book aims to do precisely that. Although of value, this method runs the risk of cleaving a living thing from its very surroundings – of failing to acknowledge the thread that forms the tapestry. Without habitat, there are no species to market, no flagship individuals for which to gain membership. Unfortunately, we also don’t have the luxury of time to think this way any more. The resulting landscape is soon pocked, scarred by the life it failed to parent.
I once noticed a farmer on Twitter who was carbon-accounting. He expressed surprise to learn that his grassland was absorbing twice the carbon (per hectare) of the nearby woodland. How refreshing to witness his thinking revive, as he called for his followers to see woodland and grassland as a rich, complex patchwork, not some standalone silver bullet. After all, the soil below terrestrial grasslands harbours some of the highest carbon stocks of any UK habitat. The same goes for seagrass.
And so, I wanted to find out why the fields below the seas were suddenly being woven into the British climate narrative with such urgency. Porthdinllaen, a tiny coastal village embraced in a bay on Snowdonia’s spectacular Llŷn Peninsula, remains home to one of the most extensive seagrass beds in the UK. Time to see what all the fuss was about.
Arriving in late afternoon, I regretted not having more time to explore Cardigan Bay. Famed for its marine wildlife, this is the first area of coastline in Great Britain to be designated a Marine Heritage Coast and now another Special Area of Conservation (SAC) too. One of the largest bays in the British Isles, its 60-mile expanse offers one of those moments where suddenly mainland Britain materialises on the map in front of your eyes.
Sandwiched in the middle of the supercontinent Pangea (around 250 million years ago), Britain and Ireland enjoyed closer company. Over time, they continued to separate as Earth’s enormous jigsaw began to disassemble. Rejoining briefly 10,000 years ago during the last Ice Age via the aptly named ‘British–Irish Ice Sheet’, they shared similar geology and biodiversity. Many of the notches, edges and grooves that today characterise both coastlines owe their anatomy to this ice and the slow retreat of its vast glaciers. If you see Cardigan Bay as half of a broken heart on a map, then its other half waits across the Irish Sea somewhere near Wexford. The arc sweeps from the Llŷn Peninsula to St David’s Head in south Pembrokeshire, facing the prevailing Atlantic wind. Bottlenose dolphins, harbour porpoises, grey seals, razorbills, guillemots, gannets, gulls, sea and river lampreys, shags, basking sharks, leatherback turtles and sunfish call this shallow bay home. Either way, Cardigan Bay is a credit to Wales and the entire British Isles.
I was still unsure what I expected the town of Cardigan to be like, but it was different. A hub of Welsh heritage, culture and easy access to exquisite landscapes make this pretty town an easy sell. After failing to identify a single person wearing a cardigan, I loitered outside a pub that overlooked a brown Teifi Estuary. I spied a table that had a view of it and tried to blend with the youths of Cardigan in the sunny pub garden. Dad phoned, saying he was about 45 minutes away. Translation: 45 minutes to get up to all sorts before parental supervision prevailed. So, I ordered a pint of Guinness – my first since the pubs re-opened in the summer after lockdown. Sipping almost sceptically and spilling a decent lug on my shorts, I decided I was OK with feeling a bit of a novice on my journey. Drinking alone at a pub whose name I couldn’t pronounce and a hopeless flirt with my bike, I ran a hand through my mess of tangled hair and massaged my aching quads. A strange old time.
Oh, wonderful, beautiful, comfortable car. A sight for sore bodies indeed. My earlier guilt at continuing my Welsh travels via diesel engine diminished at the sudden exhaustion and headache that hit as soon as I heaped myself into the passenger seat. I’ll make up for it tomorrow, I thought. To the background of a classic 1980s playlist, chatter and comfortable silence, it didn’t take long to slide back into childhood. The same turns of phrase preserving the legacy of my relationship with Dad. Father and daughter. Daddy and Sophie. On the road again. New times and old times. We wound north on empty, wide roads that mapped the land I had grown to love. Sunset stained the horizon over a slate-grey sea. Cottages lit the darkening valleys like tea lights, and I dozed most of the way to Porthmadog.
We awoke to biblical rain lashing the window of the Travelodge. Naturally, I stood by the window in my pants, filmed it and have never watched it since. There is nothing quite like receiving North Wales at face value. This was the Wales of my childhood – sunny days a bonus. I knew it well. My legs ached almost audibly from the ride the previous day, and I lingered in bed.
If locals call the Llŷn Peninsula ‘Snowdon’s arm’, then my destination was around about the elbow region – a sodden 18-mile ride away. Keen to explore the Peninsula with me, Dad became my support car – taking my great lump of a rucksack and leaving me blissfully unencumbered and exposed to the rain. If you’ve never been lucky enough to visit this Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), then put it on your list immediately. Imagine cherry-picking all the best ports, fishing towns, farmsteads, bays, cliffs and coves of Cornwall and confining them to a 30-mile emerald spit surrounded by the Irish Sea. A final sweep of lux, vignette and saturation (for you, influencers), ensuring the colours leap in all weathers, a smattering of lapping waves and just enough gull cries – and behold, you have your Llŷn Peninsula. And, dare I say it … Cornwall’s more attractive twin. (Dramatic pause.)
I was happy to leave Porthmadog, wending through a dreary industrial estate and following all signs pointing to where fewer people would be. The geography changed. Shy mountains near the Snowdon range rose in the distance, their summits veiled behind clouds. The hum of an awakening Porthmadog had long since faded, replaced by oystercatcher whistles, a skylark and slick tyres on wet roads. Feeling thoroughly rinsed, I kept moving, resisting a toilet spot that had a vista of a bottling grey seal. Being overlooked by a fellow mammal during such delicate moments is something that even I cannot abide. Starlings lining webs of telephone wires welcomed me to Morfa Nefyn. Its rich local maritime history features Viking warriors besieging Norman castles on the Llŷn and in nearby Anglesey. One mile away in Nefyn witnessed the triumph of the Edwardian conquest over Wales in 1284. Sometimes it’s the most unassuming of places that wallow in a reservoir of legend. Separated by a short headland, the crescent beach of Morfa Nefyn resembles a curvy ‘W’: one half being Porth Nefyn, the other Porthdinllaen – which is where our king-sized bed of seagrass lies. I skidded around the hairpin bend that steered me along to Caffi Porthdinllaen, where I bumped into Dad and was due to meet up with Jake Davies – marine biologist and master seagrass diver, who was going to take me on a bit of a snorkel safari.
It never occurred to me that Jake would not be a balding, middle-aged man. We had only ever communicated via email, you see. Dad and I were surprised, then, when a strapping 25-year old strode across the car park towards us. He had this Bond-like/Navy Seal vibe going on, dressed all in black – making a slight detour to help a girl out before his very daring and dangerous underwater mission. Snorkelling gear was hoisted gamely over his (must admit, broad) shoulders – a shark tooth necklace around his neck. Welsh people are, on the whole, some of the friendliest people you will meet. Wasting no time in getting straight to the point, Jake led us along the quiet, stony beach towards Porthdinllaen, chatting about his work and upbringing in this picturesque corner of Britain.
The Welsh are a patriotic bunch, and it’s lovely to see. Seventy-three per cent of the Llŷn Peninsula population favour fluent Welsh, and speaking to Jake, I sensed genuine pride in his community. A rare thing when most 20-somethings still seek a sense of place far away from home. He spoke of his father, who comes from a long line of maritime folk like so many here. The sea and its contents were woven more seamlessly into human life than today. He reminisced about their fishing at sunrise together before school. The very curve of this bay is a lifelong frame of reference for Jake’s view of the world.
He explained how often Wales is overlooked. Whether for wildlife, research, long-term residence or economic promise, it’s not always first to spring to mind. Following a degree in marine biology at nearby Bangor University, Jake works as the project coordinator for Angel Shark Project: Wales, led by the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) and Natural Resources Wales. It aims to defend and understand this critically endangered shark that so few have previously heard of (me included). With Wales being the northern limit for several key species in the British Isles, Jake explained how this place is potentially one of the last refuges in the world for the angel shark, outside a stronghold in the Canary Islands. Jake has also worked closely with Project Seagrass over the years, helping it carry out surveys, with seed collection and as an ambassador to raise people’s awareness of the importance of these unique meadows. Like a young Jacques Cousteau, Jake’s photography is an essential part of his arsenal in sharing these stories.
Fostered by the National Trust of Wales since 1994, Porthdinllaen too shares a fascinating history with the rest of the peninsula. The remains of the Trwyn Dinllaen Hill Fort on the western edge of the headland dates back to around 100bc. Visitors may relish the thought of this idyllic harbour once being considered a significant port between Dublin and London in the early eighteenth century before its revamp into a shipbuilding, fishing, trading hub some years later. Today, a small number of buildings hug the base of the headland at Porthdinllaen: some white, some red, others traditional stone. Some were so short and worn that I felt I might be both upstairs and downstairs at the same time if I went inside. A steely Irish Sea at low tide lapped the shoreline, undressing ladders of rockpools and seaweed. A green meadow lay somewhere below, just out of sight.
There’s a tropical mood to seagrass that I cannot shake. Evie Furness, a marine biologist and technician for Project Seagrass, agrees. ‘Most of the images or clips we have seen from seagrass tend to be from the tropics, where turtles and manatees feed,’ she said. ‘But who knew that we have it here?’ As was becoming the norm, we spoke over Zoom, the conversation easy and bright, interrupted by the occasional delivery at the door. Evie is in her 20s too, and she and I share a similar journey. After school, we were both clueless as to what ‘the plan’ was and pursued broad undergraduate degrees that cherished interest versus expectation. A chance dive in a quarry near Heathrow Airport was enough to convince Evie that there was more to life than what exists on its surface. Hooked, she studied marine biology at Swansea University, interrupting travels to do a year in industry with Project Seagrass, before later accepting a position to be a part of its pioneering restoration mission. As I write, she’s currently juggling work and a master’s degree, and I admire her immensely.
Unlike much of the conservation narrative, the story of seagrass is uplifting and bewildering. It makes you dare to believe in a hopeful future for the aching seas of the British Isles and to trust in the people fighting to save them. Seagrass Ocean Rescue is a one-of-a-kind initiative. Its name, though dramatic, is an understatement, for this is a project like no other. Seeking partnership with Sky Ocean Rescue, WWF and academic weight from Cardiff University, Swansea University and local support – the UK’s debut large-scale seagrass restoration project is a celebration of collaboration.
It follows the footsteps of the iconic seagrass revival in the Chesapeake Bay – the largest estuary in the USA. A huge citizen science gardening endeavour ensued in 1999, where teams of researchers and the public rallied to plant 72 million seeds. The subsequent return of 9,000 acres (3,642 hectares) of seagrass to the Atlantic remains the single largest area of restored seagrass in the world. This achievement and Seagrass Ocean Rescue confirm how working in concert can discharge a dying habitat from intensive care. It’s an approach that we must deploy far and wide. Our weapon of mass construction.
‘I think a big thing is just how many people don’t realise seagrass is there,’ Evie admitted. ‘We’ve lost ninety-two per cent in the UK over the last hundred years. It’s insane how quickly we’re destroying our coastlines without really having explored them.’ I want to stress how the surge to revive seagrass is not just another PR spin for conservationists. Its marked disappearance has put our decaying relationship with the ocean under increasing scrutiny, despite large-scale declines of these meadows being a vague storyline throughout the last century.
The 1930s witnessed seagrass beds on both sides of the Atlantic hit with an epidemic of ‘wasting disease’. Evie explained that this has a similar deleterious effect to potato blight, which triggered the infamous nineteenth-century Irish Potato Famine – the Great Hunger. Wasting disease led vast meadows to succumb to a pathogenic slime mould. Green leaves choked into black and brown – erasing 90 per cent of eelgrasses from North American and European seabeds. Combined with the barrage of artificial fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides that defined the intensification of agriculture, seagrass beds stood little chance of resuming their former glory. With these excess nutrients, sewage and waste leaching their way into the sea, fuelling algal growth and choking the seagrass’s ability to photosynthesise – humans were rapidly (and unwittingly) robbing British coastlines of their shoreline identity.
A study on seagrass in the Thames Estuary (2018) found that water pollution from herbicides increased this meadow’s vulnerability to future bouts of pathogenic disease. ‘With so much pollution entering rivers and running off the land,’ Evie insisted, ‘and when you’ve already got a weakened ecosystem that is then hit by all this pollution, it really is the last straw.’
It won’t surprise you to know that physical disturbance is also a massive issue for seagrass. We regularly prove how grass and propellers are bad neighbours. The ecology of perfection has preordained a trade-off, where steel blades triumph over cellulose ones. Much research has shown how disturbances in harbours with seagrass have lowered shoot density and bruised overall productivity within the meadow. The trouble is that both people and seagrass gravitate towards the same sheltered, shallow habitats – causing a regular stand-off. ‘Unregulated leisure craft is a problem,’ said Evie, ‘people gunning it on a speedboat in a sheltered harbour on a sunny day, not realising seagrass is below, can result in the propeller acting like a lawnmower – cutting up the grass.’
The Seagrass Ecosystem Research Group from Swansea University, led by Professor Richard Unsworth (Evie’s boss), estimated that at least 6 hectares of total seagrass loss in the UK is attributed to ‘swinging chain boat moorings’. Dredging and anchoring, too, rip literal holes in the meadow. Reading extracts of Cousteau’s Silent World, it’s hard to ignore his genuine bewilderment – and horror – upon witnessing the damage anchors and trawlers can wreak on the seabed. He writes how fish escaped in terror, as though the net was the Grim Reaper, how nature’s delicate farmland was swiftly obliterated and undermined.
If that wasn’t terrifying enough, groundbreaking research (2021) on Posidonia oceanica seagrass in the Mediterranean – the oldest species on Earth – shows its sensitivity to human-made noise in the ocean. Noise created from boat propellers, for example, caused the loss and distortion of the seagrass’s starch grains – stripping our vital plant of its crucial energy store. Growth is impaired and confused. Being opportunistic pathfinders, water currents leap on the chance to charter new routes through a vulnerable seabed, increasing the entire habitat’s likelihood of even further erosion. All current research points to an urgent re-evaluation of seagrass-friendly mooring systems as we continue to enjoy the coastal playground. It’s one giant shambles of a feedback loop.
Back on Porthdinllaen, Jake and I suited up. Despite the season, it felt chilly, and I envied the thick, fleecy lining of Jake’s diving suit, hood and gloves – laughing weakly at my summer surfing wetsuit with its bright pink arms and slight Eau-de-Estuary. Not exactly the Lara Croft transformation I had anticipated. I looked and felt a bit of a thumb. No matter, though, as Jake had lent me a mask, snorkel and fins, and all I cared about was the clarity of the underwater field. As well as being my guide, Jake had a task to execute for Swansea University. At this time of year, the grass was nearing the end of its growing season and preparing to flower and go to seed during August, and Jake was collecting shoots with seeds in a little pouch. This vital fieldwork has facilitated Seagrass Ocean Rescue in its revival mission further down the coast. We waded out towards the lines of little fishing boats anchored around the harbour, floating as soon as possible.
Looking back, I think swimming among seagrass could rank in the top five of the great human experiences. We forget the tender joy the natural world can illicit. Its raw force muffled under a duvet of digital distraction. The beauty of searching for a plant is it involves no spectacular chase. Rarely does it require hours of boredom in a hide and a rediscovery of how fascinating one’s fingernails are. Plants don’t try to outwit you. They are just there.
I recently asked a botanist friend of mine what gets him going about plants – what really does it for him? He told me plants face all the same stressors as other species – temperature extremes, food availability, space, light, predation, noise pollution – yet they cannot run away, fly away, hide or hunt. ‘They have to evolve ways to deal with all these things while remaining rooted to the spot.’ Pretty impressive. I had never thought of it like that before. So, I put my head under the water at the earliest opportunity. It was cold, clean and unbelievably clear, thanks to the natural filtration of bacteria, pathogens and pollution passing through every leaf. Gliding above a seabed that ripened from the rocky, sandy shore, the meadow unfolded before us like a concertina.
I felt as though I were entering the gates of Eden itself at times. This was a world that felt new and ancient all at once. As though time had no place here. Finally achieving flight, we soared. The heavy cloud that kissed the horizon didn’t matter, as it felt as though light persisted within these blades of grass, causing them to glow faintly. Perhaps residual sunlight had entered the previous day and remained safely guarded by a million tiny cells. I still imagine this. Although undeniably similar, the leaves are longer and broader than the grass of our weekend picnics. The ocean frontier demands changed anatomy, urging blades in established meadows to grow up to 1 metre in length.
A freshwater eel darted into a burrow of blades. A rare sight for us, perhaps – but not for seagrass. Gliding weightlessly over the seabed, Jake pointed at it to make sure I had seen it, later telling me that it was only the second one he had ever seen, despite years of diving here. I duck-dived to join, my head caught in a vice of freezing Irish Sea – but I didn’t care. My hand dangled, fingertips brushing the grass tips. Some blades were visibly longer. Others were only just beginning.
Yes, a seagrass meadow carries a simple aesthetic, but it has a three-dimensional quality that makes it so much more than just a field underwater. Denser areas of grass revealed the direction of the current, as a field of barley does the wind. I soon realised it wasn’t just grass – it was a complex habitat in constant motion, governing the species that depend on it with immense grace and fluidity. I could only admire. Because if one were to compare our movements in the water – Jake waltzed where I dad-danced. Although lucky enough to have spent a good portion of childhood in/on/under the sea, my legs pulled me back to the surface every time I dove, deployed as though airbags. It felt good to finally realise my mermaid dreams, in North Wales of all places.
I want you to know that seagrass reproduces sexually. There is no other way of putting it, I’m afraid. Like terrestrial grasses and flowers (the lily is seagrass’s closest land relative), male seagrass flowers release pollen from the stamen into the water column. Not only are they waterproof, but seagrass pollen grains are also the longest on the planet, measuring a whopping 5 millimetres, compared with the average 0.1 millimetres of other plants. Clumping together in horny, purposeful chains, they drift the currents. They seek out lady flower parts to delicately fertilise with their hefty member of pollen, sometimes for miles.
Later in the summer, crabs, fish and shrimp would likely assume the bee’s role, moving from hairlike flower to hairlike flower across the meadow – valued assistants in this primal act. A group of researchers in 2012 looking at seagrass pollination in the Caribbean found for the first time that many crustaceans had seagrass pollen embedded in parts of their bodies. Coincidence? I think not.
There was a clear method and something rather hunter-gatherer-y about the seagrass sampling technique. Simple and satisfying. As though when finally muted underwater, we shrug off our cloaks and dress more appropriately, on a par with the seabed. Jake scanned the meadow for young shoots with seeds, gently picking, checking and gathering into a black netted pouch. The whole charade was not dissimilar to blackberrying along a September hedgerow. Taking a couple of shoots, I couriered them to the surface for further inspection. Picture young peas in a pod, and you’re not far off. Although the seeds were visible, the leaves on either side of them enveloped them protectively, but they looked surprisingly fragile now loosened from their stable tether, their shelf life all too easy to see. I felt like an excitable child clutching a magical green wand, chosen from its underwater wizarding world for a covert assignment – the dutiful wonder plant, the lungs of the ocean, held in my frozen hands. I don’t think I could have felt happier.
During more than 300 hours of dive time around the UK coast, millions of seeds have been gathered like this, fuelling the restoration goals of Project Seagrass. When I spoke to Evie, it was early December 2020, and she was both elated and exhausted. They had achieved their mammoth goal and returned one million pine-nut-sized seeds to the seabed the week before. ‘We’re in the recovery stage now,’ she laughed. A phenomenal feat in an extraordinary year.
It occurs to me that humans can be genuinely remarkable beings. Somewhere deep within our sinews and synapses exists the will to make things happen. It’s quite something. Remarkably, those involved in such feats seem empowered, buoyed – inspired, even – when they realise a goal. Maybe we should do this more?
As with most conservation endeavours, scale was crucial. The more seagrass planted, the better its chances of survival. Two hectares – the size of two rugby pitches – is the ultimate goal in Seagrass Ocean Rescue. A daredevil wish to establish a relict meadow for up to 200 million invertebrates, rare seahorses, pipefish, cuttlefish, cetaceans and perhaps even our endangered angel shark. A wish to armour our coastlines against warming temperatures, high carbon concentrations and the assaults of extreme storms and industrial fishing. South of where I snorkelled with Jake, the small community of Dale lies on the Marloes Peninsula in west Pembrokeshire. Evie explained how evidence suggests a carpet of seagrass once covered the entire Dale Bay, yet modern times have seen it regress into an anoxic, algal-dominated state. Ho hum, couldn’t we just cover it up with AstroTurf, found a Boules Society and apologise, whilst pouring ourselves a Pimm’s?
With research rapidly confirming seagrass as a serious ally in our fight against climate change, a heroic intervention was called for. It was a case of collecting enough seeds and planting them in a way that wouldn’t damage the seabed but would give the grass a decent chance of germinating. All seeds were painstakingly handpicked, just like Jake was doing on the Llŷn. Evie reminisced the seed-collection dives fondly, ‘Dolphins swam with us, sharks, seals, rays, fish – a total biodiversity hub.’ Please, take us there.
All seeds were then sent to the lab at Swansea University, separated from their leaves. In theory, when seagrass rots, the leaves float to the surface, and the seeds sink to the bottom. For Evie, it turns out a little more coaxing is needed to separate seed from parent, the majority having to be sorted in the lab. ‘We were up to our elbows in rotting seagrass for months! The lab smelt like a giant, rotting egg.’ Worth it, though.
Once seeds were harvested, it was time to sow. In the early stages of the project in 2015, seabags (importantly, not ‘teabags’) were trialled in the Helford River, Cornwall, and local Porthdinllaen. Richard Unsworth led the team that included Evie and our friend Dr Hanna Nuuttila (seagrass, porpoises, it’s all connected). A simple method referred to as ‘Bags of Seagrass Seeds Line’ (aptly nicknamed BoSSLine) planted seeds into the seabed within biodegradable hessian bags, released at 1-metre intervals underwater via lengths of rope. Such trials highlighted the importance of selecting a suitable environment. Remember, seagrass thrives in shallow, sheltered and stable bays. Ninety-four per cent of bags placed in such environments yielded successful shoots, compared with a location on the Llŷn that ruined the young shoots following a storm. ‘We’ve got such powerful tides here in the UK,’ admitted Evie, ‘that if you just chuck seeds out in any old bay, they’ll get washed away and eaten by shore crabs.’
With 20,000 hessian bags, it was time to rally the troops. According to Evie, an army of 2,000 volunteers included hundreds of local schoolchildren – ‘The best workers you will ever come across. You’re giving them a chance to play, and save the world.’ Seagrass Ocean Rescue sounded like an enormous disaster relief effort, and I want to know where I can enlist. A stirring thought that warrants a trumpet or two and some above-average wartime propaganda – I’m shouting ‘DIG FOR BRITAIN, LADS!’ as I write.
Each hessian bag needed to be filled with sand first, then topped with 50 seeds. Holes in the bags facilitate seed germination and offer effective protection from passing crabs and currents. Finally, every bag was tied onto 20 kilometres of rope – forming the biodegradable BoSSLine. Evie described how volunteers, clearly enamoured at the prospect of being part of such a movement, came from all over the UK in February 2020 ‘to lift heavy boxes of sand and seagrass and just plant tiny seeds in the sea – it was incredible.’ Google the project, and the photos of these exploits are properly uplifting – humans at their best.
By the end of the week, the team had planted 750,000 seeds. By the following winter, they surpassed 800,000 – a small, restricted team planted the remaining 250,000 shortly before Evie and I met. The whole procedure is deliciously low-tech and replicable. Fifty volunteers were put up in a run-down fort in Dale for a week, up at the crack of dawn, prepping seed bags till sunset. ‘Then we had the boat team,’ Evie told me, ‘lowering the bags tied to the rope onto the seabed.’ Despite the Covid-19 pandemic affecting the project, most of the planting had thankfully been completed before the effects took hold. The team returned during the summer to see if seedlings were taking root and make any necessary repairs to the sediment. Evie recalled the lovable first shoots spiralling out of gaps in the hessian, which one day promise to flourish beyond all expectation. Monitoring the seabed around the meadow like this also keeps tabs on its efficiency at storing carbon. A 2015 study in the Marine Pollution Bulletin found a 20 per cent reduction in carbon stocks on the sparser margins of a meadow compared with the centre.
It’s still early days to determine the long-term success of the seagrass revival in Dale, as is the case with any inaugural effort. There is no guarantee that the meadows will fully germinate. Still, the methodology is sound, thanks to years of trials and improved understanding from the teams at Swansea and Cardiff University. So degraded is the water quality that UK coastlines are currently unable to institute a ‘natural’ revival, meaning that further human intervention is needed. Next, the plan is to resurrect the estuaries within our industrial nerve centre: the Orwell, Humber and Stour, and additional sites in North Wales. Although magnificent, armies of volunteers might become an anecdote. The project in the Chesapeake Bay implemented combine-harvester-type equipment to collect and sow the seeds in favourable locations along the seabed. Mechanisation is an unlikely comrade in accelerating the future of this habitat in the British Isles.
Seagrass meadows support such an eclectic community of life that they have often been compared to an African savannah. Just as the acacia tree eventually feeds the vulture, flows of energy and matter swim between trophic levels, linking and reinforcing the coastal food chain, enabling life, death and rebirth all at once. In your average seagrass meadow, sea urchins and shellfish, some shy, others bold, along with invertebrate grazers, scavengers, decomposers, predators and prey congregate amid the fronds. Many of the species within a seagrass meadow, like oysters, have strong calcareous shells – an exoskeleton mostly made of calcium carbonate and a small amount of protein. Your average seashell, as well as corals and other molluscs, is dependent on this mineral housing for its survival – and scientists are thinking that the presence of seagrass helps fortify both the shells and their delicate inhabitants against looming ocean acidification.
The reality is that our oceans strongly feel an increase in atmospheric carbon produced by fossil fuels. So much so that too much of it can serve to lower the pH of the water. In water, carbon dioxide quickly becomes carbonic acid, soon disrupting the careful balance of acid/alkaline. Perhaps you’ve seen photos of statues or sculptures eroded by acid rain? The Taj Mahal is one of them – its glorious white facade is turning peaky and sour. Ocean acidification is the same concept. A relatively new area of ocean research, it is fast becoming a priority to understand. For animals like oysters, coral, and many molluscs with calcareous shells, a lower pH causes their shells to dissolve effectively in real-time. Already, figures estimate the global ocean pH has lowered by about 30 per cent. I imagine gradual disintegration would be a very unpleasant experience, no doubt leaving the victim feeling exposed and vulnerable. Animals that produce these mineral structures can repair damage and thicken them to an extent, but the effort of sustaining such maintenance would no doubt outweigh any long-term benefit.
But here’s another reason why seagrass is just way above par. As you’ll read in just a minute, seagrass can actively remove carbon from the atmosphere. And by doing so, it can rebalance the scales – and neutralise an acidic pH. Just by being a plant, seagrass can fortify the shells, the meadow, the planet against the threats we are creating. With experts suggesting that ocean acidity could increase by 150 per cent by 2100 if we carry on burning fossil fuels, whether or not we act on seagrass-related services should not even be a discussion.
With this in mind, it would be unwise to see the new meadow in Dale Bay as anything but an extraordinary example that should be followed. In 2009, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recorded the highest global level of carbon dioxide wafting around our atmosphere for more than 800,000 years. A concentration nearly 40 per cent higher than before the Industrial Revolution kicked off in the late eighteenth century. Global emissions need to fall by 85 per cent by 2050 if we are to prevent Earth’s thermostat from rising by more than 2ºC.
Essentially, we need to suck carbon out of the atmosphere – and quickly. Feel free to disagree, but seagrass, mangroves and marshes far surpass ancient woodland and tropical rainforests in this regard. They are in a different league altogether, I’m afraid (secretly delighted). ‘What’s amazing,’ Evie admitted, ‘is how much campaigning there is to save tropical rainforests – which of course are still vital – and yet we’ve got our own equivalent here that is consistently overlooked in its value to us.’
Seagrass beds offer stability and lots of it. Mental stability, of course, for a freezing face in the Irish Sea, but it’s the architecture of a mat of roots that should prick the ears of the savvy. A dense subterranean rhizome fortress physically strengthens the seabed. Rhizomes describe an underground stem that in some plants grows horizontally. As it matures, a thick mat of new roots and shoots develops – lots of carbon in here! As marram grass reassures a shifting dune, seagrass meadows are a buffer, offering vital friction between sea and land.
The scenario goes like this: a storm brews out at sea, waves grow in strength, and they begin sprinting to the coastline. But, oh! Whatever is that?! An unforeseen obstacle has caused a sudden loss of energy in our lovely waves, so close to land. As though meeting an enormous speed bump, the wave’s energy immediately weakens against the meadow below the surface. The seabed has robbed the storm of its power. Despite this inconvenience, the wave eventually does reach the coast, albeit with a muffled impact and a bruised ego. Speaking for all 603 seaside piers across the British Isles, make no mistake – we want this to happen.
Almost always, the structural complexity of a seagrass bed (with its roots, rhizomes, and svelte leaves) keeps it open to receiving carbon via both photosynthesis and external sources. Phytoplankton, fish turds, seabird turds – anything organic drifting in the water column will do. Leaf turnover is high, with older leaves falling to the seabed. Not dissimilar to a leaf carpet in autumn, yet where a beech leaf may rot within a few weeks, seagrass leaves will linger in low oxygen levels, stockpiling carbon the entire time. If you are in any doubt, wander an eelgrass bed at low tide (I’ve heard this is particularly rewarding on the Swale, near the Thames Estuary). You can reveal its dense, black carbon larder simply by scraping away the top layer of sediment with your boot. Together with their large surface area, seagrass beds can match-fund a tropical rainforest’s centuries-long carbon donation, and then some because our talented carbon grave-digger can store carbon for millennia. It already has done. In the UK alone, our seagrass beds once stored nearly 12 million tonnes of carbon – that’s the annual emissions of around 8 million cars. Yes, seagrass is the one that almost got away, but this reminds us of its potential to return and realise its former glory. As faithful as a farm cat (when given a chance).
Scientists in Spain’s Portlligat Bay once found carbon deposits in seagrass beds measuring more than 10 metres thick, at 6,000 years old. Such is the alchemy of many plants – time travel is possible. Just like the rings of an oak tree transporting you to the coronation of England’s first king (925ad), every inch below the surface of a seagrass meadow is a real-time window into history. The years simply spill behind you the further you look – our starry sky below the seas.
Before you slip, consider the fact that this topography could one day save us from drowning. A mind-bender of a study published in Nature (2019) discovered that these layers of carbon below a seagrass bed in fact elevate the sea level. The thought is a raised seabed would soften the blow of climate-induced sea-level rise – a genuine threat that many coastlines will have to confront within the next century. How much would it cost to raise the seabed artificially? Don’t even.
More than that, a research team in Spain in early 2021 found strong evidence suggesting that seagrass meadows may help to hoover up the plastic waste entering the sea. The seafloor is increasingly cited as a final resting place for terrestrial plastic waste. It’s not a good look. Up to 900 million items of microplastic (pieces less than 5 millimetres in size) every year are thought to be collected and bundled into ‘Neptune balls’ – in the Mediterranean alone. Around the size of a golf ball, the researchers estimated each kilogram of these planty, fibrous Neptune balls can store an average of 1,500 pieces of plastic. Incredibly, it seems as if this natural trapping process halts the plastic in its tracks – preventing it from entering the open ocean. When washed ashore, these bizarre formations have a similar vibe to a hairy coconut.
Although it’s likely the plastic offers zero benefits to the seagrass, any harm done to the meadow remains to be discovered. And I can’t help but marvel at this habitat’s almost altruistic peace offering to us – a gentle reminder that we ought to be more careful. Another dimension to its already insurmountable services. Seagrass: the great ignored philanthropist – what have we done to deserve you?
We were due to spend the night on the peninsula. Like my first-edition thoughts on departing Wales in 2003, I had mixed emotions as my flight with seagrass began its descent back to land. The top half of my body had physically checked out of the Irish Sea, and I couldn’t remember what it felt like to have hands, but the bottom half wanted to carry on swimming over the meadow. A healthy balance, perhaps.
Lines of traditional cloddiau (ancient stone walls and earth banks marking field boundaries across the Llŷn) sketched our route west to the campsite, which lay a short hop from Morfa Nefyn. A wholesome affair, as several other tents and campervans dotted the lush meadow that overlooked the mirror of the sea. Dad and I drank wine from paper cups and had dinner in an empty pub garden down the lane. Towards sunset, leaving my shoes behind, I found a path that made its way to an outcrop of rocks on the edge of the headland. As I walked towards the sound of gentle waves lapping, the grass brushed like soft hair below my feet in a bizarre déjà vu. A shag settled on a molten sea. The sun lost strength below a mackerel sky, intensely orange in its last hurrah. I appeared to have stepped into a guided meditation. Exercising a similar intention, a family of four stood with their arms around each other, looking across the horizon. I offered to take their photograph, and we exchanged niceties about the weather, the silence and the times. And they didn’t ask why I wasn’t wearing shoes, which was a relief.
In the wake of Project Seagrass’s success in Dale, I had asked Evie what she was afraid of. I enjoy asking people this. It takes a certain level of tenacity for someone to dedicate their working life to protecting something they care about. Something they know they might have to grieve for. Passion knows no age and, although young, Evie’s bond with the sea runs deeper than for most. She spoke of her ‘terror’, when imagining diving in a sea and seeing bare sand. The irony of a paradise lost, when many of us would see such underwater minimalism as something straight out of a travel brochure.
With seagrass meadows supporting over a fifth of global commercial fish species – and home to 40 times more marine life than a bare seabed – the economics are as clear as the water itself. Cod, plaice, pollock – the ones on the chalkboard at £7.60 – over one-third of these British commercial fish rely on the haven of these meadows at some point during their life cycle. Mothers and fry seek safety in a palace of fronds, joining sponges, prehistoric worms, anemones, cuttlefish, squid, snails – the bedrock of the ocean exists between these blades. And, according to Evie, ‘This is absolutely the number one benefit of restoring seagrass.’ I’m inclined to agree.
But, capitalism prevails. Countless papers cite the immense food and financial security afforded by fisheries as the most persuasive argument for seagrass today. In Wales, a lengthy debate continues between conservationists, fishers and the Welsh government – rowing over increased access granted to artisan scallop fisheries around Cardigan Bay. And I do understand the challenges here. Just the other day in the dawn of 2021, as I write, a headline from The Times tells us how trawlers are damaging most of Britain’s protected areas. But how odd that it seems to injure the very habitats that enable the catch. Not just the catch of fish, of course, but carbon, as we now know.
Nature Climate Change published a reel of research in 2016 that, to be honest, scares me. The act of damaging seagrass beds and other marine vegetated habitats, be it by storms or us, can release its stored carbon into the atmosphere – waving it into the sky like a helium balloon. Such disturbance is releasing one picogram of (once buried) carbon annually. In case you were wondering, that’s 1 trillion kilograms. Or 1 trillion bags of sugar. Either way, I lament for logic.
Here’s a beautiful thing, though. Seagrass affects no one, unlike many of the other large-scale restoration movements being proposed across Blighty (wetlands, woodland, peatland, unimproved grasslands). Perhaps this is what’s spurring further seagrass restoration projects around the country – including England’s largest, in Plymouth Sound. The only interaction with intensive agriculture it will have is mixing with its pollutants. Its rendezvous with humanity being either via a propeller blade, anchor or inquisitive wanderer. ‘There is just no conflict!’ Evie stated triumphantly. ‘From the start, the areas of meadow restoration have remained in full use to fishermen. They understand that this meadow will only increase their catch, their livelihood. It’s just a winner.’ For everyone.
It was my last morning before home time. Dad had brought his paddle board with him – meaning a final flight across the meadow was unexpectedly on the cards. I was curious to explore deeper into the bay at Porthdinllaen and view the fields from above. Perhaps they would remain just out of sight, but there was no doubt they were firmly on my mind. Others – paddle boarders, kayakers, swimmers, walkers, readers – were finding something else here.
Skimming on top of water untouched by wind, re-entering this world from an aerial view felt an almost priestly endeavour. More visible than the previous day, the mountains of the north added a rugged quality to this softly lit bay, which I enjoyed very much indeed. Various sizes of moon jellyfish offered an escort back to the main part of the meadow, making me feel important. Their rings of pink gonads (reproductive organs – at the bottom of their stomachs) stared up at me like freshly rolled dice across a fluid poker table. I wondered whose roll it was next.
Once again, the seagrass bathed in its aura below an overcast sky. I shifted from standing to lying on my stomach, one arm dangling in the water, face glued to the moving window below. Every so often, a lip of water would envelop my nose and allow me to exist in both worlds, just for a moment. Swaying with the motion of invisible currents, it was like the meadow was workshopping a new samba routine and wanted my (completely uninformed) opinion.
Circling an outcrop of rocks that hosted a mothers’ meeting of herring gulls, I laughed at their noisy fluster when they were occasionally mobbed by a great black-backed gull that jostled for the best perch. A grey seal, the harbour master – was more present that morning. His dog-like head surfaced at regular intervals, outlandish whiskers X-raying my intentions and disappearing back to record them in his logbook. It is times like these that Evie hopes will feature in the national vocabulary. ‘As soon as you see seagrass for yourself, you wake up. I’ve seen so many people then say, “Oh, my God, we’re actually losing this”, and then they want to help.’
I can’t help but wonder how tempting it must have been for those involved in Project Seagrass to sow in secrecy. Admittedly, I once hammered a bird box to a tree in the local park just to see how unforgivable being such a guerrilla might be for the local council. Three coal tits fledged last spring. There is an undeniable appeal in abandoning the frustration of formal environmental decisions and just cracking on with the job yourself. Sure, armed with the knowledge and workforce, the Project Seagrass teams could have easily dumped a bunch of seeds all over the British seabed, and we would be none the wiser. Yet if the melody of the sea is to be truly resolved, human community must be at the heart of the song. Better to act in full frontal view of the public and give them a chance to be curious – given that human understanding is the key to survival for all habitats. And this celebration of the very best of humanity is what has made Seagrass Ocean Rescue such a roaring success.
Thinking about it, the power play of a plant is something I’m unsure we will ever truly understand. Will we ever get over seeing plants as a boring affliction? A handicap to modern life? Maybe. Much of ecology supports the ‘Field of Dreams hypothesis’, following a 1989 American baseball film of the same name that had Kevin Costner hearing a mysterious voice telling him that if he built it, they would come. Far from marking a baseball diamond on the seabed, I do like the notion. Restoring habitat is the first move we should make – our Queen’s Gambit, if you will. Using plants to rebuild biodiversity and end this game we find ourselves playing on the cluttered chessboard of the world. ‘If we build it – they will come’ should be the mantra engraved onto our conscience.
Time to flick the clock in favour of the ugly duckling, don’t you think? But first, home. Laundry, a hot shower and finding a bat being the main items on the list. Checkmate.
Notes
1 Famed for operating on one of the most efficient, reliable and sustainable public transport systems in the world. Following a work trip there in 2018, I can confirm it must be the eighth wonder of the world.
2 From a version of the 1860 ‘Submariner’s Prayer’ – author unknown.
3 Give or take, depending on whether a storm has washed any away since writing this.