Eelgrass once lined the bays and coves of Long Island Sound in lush underwater meadows, providing critical habitat to marine life, absorbing CO2, and improving water quality. However, declining water quality and coastal construction decimated eelgrass populations, and we saw a 90% decline in eelgrass in the Sound. Now, with your help we’re working to bring it back.
Our Soundkeeper team is part of a consortium stewarded through the Connecticut National Estuarine Research Reserve which is steered by restoration practitioners at UConn, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Suffolk County, and Stony Brook University. Our on-the-ground team includes Connecticut College, Remote Ecologist and Rob Vasiluth of Save Environmental. Our collective efforts are focused on restoring local eelgrass ecosystems using an innovative, nature-based approach conceived by Vasiluth. Last fall, volunteers helped us test the SEAS method (Seeds of Eelgrass Attached to Shellfish) by gluing eelgrass seeds to live clams. As the clams burrowed into the sea floor, they planted the seeds, mimicking the natural symbiosis between the species and cleaning the water. The result of two years of pilot planting? Promising signs of success.
This season, we’re scaling up. Over the past month, our team completed eight dives to collect eelgrass “spates”—reproductive shoots filled with seeds—and is now processing them at the Rankin Lab at UConn Avery Point. We’re preparing to plant 40,000 clams in four experimental plots off the coast of Duck Island, large enough to track their progress from the air.
But we can’t do it without you.
This fall, we’re hosting 18 eelgrass seed-gluing sessions over three months to compare planting times and identify the best window for restoration.
Join us to help reestablish this vital underwater habitat.