It’s best to wait to plant eelgrass in the early fall, after most of the late summer storms have passed, according to Novak, who spent several days planting seeds in Pleasant Bay and nearby East Harbor this September with a team including a biologist from the National Park Service and a representative from the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe. To get to the Pleasant Bay site, they motored out onto the water on an oyster farming boat.“The oyster farmers are interested in the project because our site is adjacent to their farm and they recognize that healthy beds are important to sustaining their livelihood,” Novak said.
Before getting wet, Novak and her team ran through their gardening plan. “We do dry runs on land, just to get everybody organized, but it’s not the same when you get into the water,” she said. “You’re trying to hold things underwater. You can’t see as well, even if you have a mask on.”
They would establish two 25-meter transect lines and then plant seeds from different donor sites in New York and Massachusetts. Nantucket was one of them. “We knew conditions were warmer at that particular site, so we said, let’s, let’s test them at Cape Cod,” she said.
Up to 500 seeds from each location would be planted by releasing them into the water column from a test tube or dropping tea bags filled with the seeds which would meander their way down to the seabed into one meter plots.
It was a slow process, Novak said, requiring hyper organization to make sure it’s clear which seeds have been planted where so that they can be monitored. In January, she will return to the sites to see if the plants are germinating. Then in the spring she’ll really be able to measure growth and compare how the different plants are faring in comparison to one another. “By next summer, we should have genomics for all of our populations, so that should really be guiding our efforts at that point,” she said.
Teresa Tomassoni is an environmental journalist covering the intersections between oceans, climate change, coastal communities, and wildlife for Inside Climate News. Her previous work has appeared in The Washington Post, NPR, NBC Latino, and the Smithsonian American Indian Magazine. Teresa holds a graduate degree in journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism. She is also a recipient of the Stone & Holt Weeks Social Justice Reporting Fellowship. In addition to reporting on oceans, Teresa teaches climate solutions reporting for The School of the New York Times.
This story originally appeared on Inside Climate News.
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