Local scientists work to combat seagrass loss after 4,000 acres killed off in Tampa Bay

TAMPA, Fla. - Twenty miles south of Tampa in Rock Ponds Preserve is a man made aquatic preserve built by the Southwest Florida Water management District that was once a vegetable farm. 

It’s now an estuary where scientists push tiny plants into the shallow, sediment bottom. They’re planting hundreds of them. 

Tom Ries, an environmental scientist with Ecosphere Restoration Institute, leads the project. 

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One type of seagrass at the estuary is called Shoal Grass, Ries said. It’s food for manatees and habitat for fish. 

Seagrass has been killed off at an alarming rate in Florida. Recent surveys show 4,000 acres of seagrass has been lost in Tampa Bay. 

Scientists said there is a variety of causes that could be associated with this, including stormwater runoff that contains fertilizer and other chemicals to rising sea levels that make grass beds deeper, starving them from sunlight. 

Ries believes his method of planting small sprigs of seagrass, hundreds of them, about a meter apart in a straight line, can yield big results. 

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"If you come back here in a year or two, it will be a carpet of grass," he said. "All of that will expand into one big seagrass bed that will be filled with life."

But Ries said it won’t work without cleaning up stormwater runoff and improving wastewater treatment. He said planting new seagrass can be only part of the ultimate solution. 

"This is not the means to fix the 4,000 acres we lost in Tampa Bay. What this does is it jump starts the recovery," he said. 

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Ries is seeking permits to plant 100 acres of seagrass in places across the state, such as Indian River Lagoon, Sarasota Bay and Tampa Bay. He is choosing spots where seagrass has died, but what killed it, like algae or runoff from a big storm, has passed. 

"We’re going to work in areas that used to be continuous beds, that are patchy now, and we’re going to fill in the patches," said Ries.

After a staggering loss that threatens Florida’s underwater environment, the first seeds of a solution may be in the hands of these new seagrass farmers.