As I stood on the sea wall at Farlington Marshes Nature Reserve, as the sun began to set on December 1st last year, as well as feeling a huge sense of relief and elation at what we’d just done, I couldn’t help also thinking back to the start of 2021 and being pretty overwhelmed with how far our project had come in just eleven months.

At the start of the year, as Covid-19 raged around us and new lockdowns were introduced, we were putting the final stages together on our plans for the Solent Seagrass Project and hoping that our partners, Boskalis Westminster Ltd would be happy and give the go-ahead. They were, and so on April 1st we were suddenly faced with the very real challenge of two years to demonstrate that we could research and develop the skills we’d need to start the process of restoring one of the Solent’s most important habitats – seagrass meadows.

A frantic summer followed, surveying and monitoring our local seagrass meadows to see which ones were growing and flowering well (seagrasses are the only marine flowering plants!) and to find suitable sites close to existing meadows, where we could set up a pilot trial.

At the same time, we were finding out about the skills and equipment we’d need. I visited the Ocean Conservation Trust to help with one of their seagrass restorations near Plymouth and we also forged links with Project Seagrass and the University of Swansea. Everyone has been helpful and supportive in sharing ideas and experience.

In late summer, we began working with our academic partners at the University of Portsmouth (UoP), to plan and carry out our first trials.

Bad weather in August, perhaps not helped by the sewage releases which happened at the same time, had affected one of our potential seed-donor sites, so we had retreated to the comparative calm of Langstone Harbour where the seagrass was still flowering and setting seed. Working on the mud in Langstone presented us with all sorts of challenges, from safety to the simple problem of getting about and trying not to cause too much disturbance, but with the aid of “mud pattens”, traditional wooden mud-walking gear, tied on to our wellies and dragging body boards behind us, we were able to start collecting seagrass seed.

We must have been quite a sight, for anyone looking out over the mudflats at that time as groups of us lay on the mud, picking through the seagrass, looking for the special flowering shoots called "spathes”, which contained the developing seeds. We couldn’t have done it without the fantastic help we got from UoP students, and volunteers from Boskalis Westminster and our own Marine Champions, who all put in the hours out on the mud.

By the end of October we estimated we’d collected 25-30,000 seeds, all being held in the aquarium tanks at the UoP Institute of Marine Science as the seeds matured and were released from the decaying spathes, a process rather grimly known as, “rotting out”.

Finally, when the seed was ready, our volunteers turned up again in force to help us fill 1025 hessian “seed bombs” with seeds and some sediment, ready for our first deployment. If you’ve seen the video, you’ve already seen what happened next. Once again helped by a team of volunteers, and Hampshire & Isle of Wight Wildlife Trust reserves staff, we transported all our freshly made seed bombs, and equipment out onto the sea wall on our Farlington Marshes Nature Reserve. From our staging point, we then put on our pattens and got marching, out to our chosen restoration site, where we carefully planted all our seed bombs, spaced 60 cm apart in neat rows, in two experimental plots, each testing a different number of seeds per seed bomb.

Planting the seed bombs reminded me rather of seeing rice being planted by hand in a paddy field. Each bomb was planted upside down, with the tied end forming an “anchor” in the mud, and leaving the parcel of seed lying flush with the mud surface. It was a tremendous effort to get everything done on a single low tide. Even with mud pattens on, walking on the sticky mud is hard work and there were aching legs and arms all round.

And that's the story so far. Now we have to wait until the spring, hoping to see some new, green shoots appearing on our two plots. The suspense is very real. We have been back once already to check the site, and all the seed bombs appear to be there, but it is still too early to know whether we've grown any seagrass yet.
What we do know for sure is that we've gained so much knowledge and experience already and that we can't wait to get started again in 2022. We have another year to go on this initial project and new sites to try and techniques to learn.

We’re not just doing this for fun (though despite the mud, sweat and tears, it has been fun!) we’re determined to bring back more seagrass to the Solent. We know that 100 years ago we perhaps had 90% more seagrass around the UK and in the Solent, lost through disease, disturbance and environmental degradation. We also know that seagrass meadows can be powerhouses of blue carbon storage, helping us battle against the effects of climate change and that they drive marine biodiversity, providing habitat, food, breeding grounds and shelter for countless species.

By restoring this wonderful habitat and Nature Based Solution to climate change, we’re hoping to create a Wilder Solent for us all to benefit from and enjoy into the future. Watch this space….