Nature Conservancy Magazine: Winter 2008 - NewsFront: Ocean Prairie

Go Deeper

Virginia Coast Reserve
Home to the longest expanse of coastal wilderness remaining on the eastern seaboard of the United States.

Global Marine Initiative
The Global Marine Initiative links innovative land and sea conservation strategies to improve survival of our coasts and oceans now and for future generations.

Last spring, Jennifer Rich canvassed just about every dive shop, fishing tackle store and marina in the mid-Atlantic, hoping to plaster their walls with posters asking for help.
Rich, the volunteer coordinator for The Nature Conservancy in Virginia, was working to recruit an army of people to swim and wade open-water flats to pluck seed shoots from underwater eelgrass. Once harvested, the seeds would be used to restore the once-thriving eelgrass beds at the Virginia Coast Reserve — 38,000 acres and 14 barrier islands owned by the Conservancy that make up the longest expanse of wilderness along the U.S. Atlantic Coast.

“We wanted people who had practice looking at things underwater,” she says. But whether folks would turn up a few weeks later to help meet the Conservancy’s goal of gathering 10 million seeds was anyone’s guess.

Eelgrass once carpeted the seabed here, harboring entire ecosystems of fish, crustaceans and mollusks. “These are our prairies,” says Barry Truitt, a Conservancy senior scientist. “Just like you have in the West, only underwater.”

Scallops, which breed almost exclusively in eelgrass, once flourished and supported a large-scale scallop fishery. But the grass was wiped out in a one-two punch of “wasting disease,” followed by a devastating hurricane in 1933 — “the worst hurricane we ever had,” says Truitt, who has been working at the coastal preserve for 32 years.

All efforts to restore the grasses — there have been several since the 1970s — failed until Bob “J.J.” Orth, a scientist with the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, got involved about a decade ago. “He came up with it all,” Truitt says. “I call him the Johnny Appleseed of eelgrass.”

Orth has experimented with techniques that include transplanting actual plants and using an underwater seed drill. But he has found the simplest method works best: harvesting seeds and tossing them overboard. The project has grown into the largest eelgrass restoration project in the world and involves an array of partners that includes federal and state agencies and private foundations. “We have planted roughly 190 acres this way, and they have now spread to over 1,400 acres,” Orth says. “We did what nature does but just kind of speeded up the process.”

When the big day arrived in June, volunteers rallied from as far away as Michigan and Mississippi. Over 10 days, a total of 85 people — including nurses, teachers and truck drivers — gathered at the dock in Oyster, Virginia, with wet suits and snorkeling gear in hand, ready to hit the water.

The volunteers spent six-hour days stuffing seed shoots into big mesh bags. The shoots were then dumped into water tanks, where they were stirred for months until the seeds separated. In the fall, the seeds were sown by hand, tossed overboard from boats traveling through the waters of the reserve. “It’s not rocket science,” says Truitt.

But it is arduous work, even for certified divers like Elaine Wilder, who works checking cargo containers in a nearby port. She saw the Conservancy’s call for volunteers in a local paper. “We started out in 5 feet of water, and I’m five-two,” she says.

“They gave us these laundry bags, and we just stuffed everything in there. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I’ll do it again.”

—Tristram Korten