Marine Eelgrass

What eelgrass typically looks
like when found in nature.

Down in the Sinepuxent Bay, a little north of Assateague Island, Maryland, a crew from the Center for Inland Bays traveled north to pick eelgrass seeds. For four days straight, in very chilly water, we boated over to an area of the bay where the bottom was densely covered in eelgrass. In our wetsuits we would jump in the water and blindly grab for strands that felt more bumpy than the rest. This indicated that these strands had eelgrass seeds embedded into them, similar to a peapod.

A seemingly slow process ended up surprising me in the end. We had filled up close to a large cooler each day, so after our four day harvest, a lot had accumulated.

This strand of eelgrass is filled with seeds.

At the end of the week, we had driven all of what we had collected up to Lewes to place it in a tank with flowing water. The eelgrass has been there for over a month now. The strands of grass decompose and the seeds inside sink to the bottom.

Every few weeks, Nick and I will travel up to Lewes to weed out the strands with no seeds in them to keep the tank clean and so we can have as much pure eelgrass seeds as possible. By the end of the season, all of our hard work, collecting, cleaning and maintaining the seeds all summer will be scattered in the Inland Bays, where they will hopefully start to grow.

Background On Eelgrass:

Zostera is a small genus of widely distributed seagrass, commonly called marine eelgrass. This is different from the freshwater plant genus Vallisneria which is also called "eelgrass".

This is the Center's eelgrass tank up in Lewes, DE.
The tank is much bigger looking in person!

Zostera can be found in a variety of marine coasts, including brackish bays. They can withstand a wide tidal range. Zostera beds are important for sediment deposition, substrate stabilization, and as nursery grounds for many species of economically important fish and shellfish. Eelgrass houses an extremely biodiverse range of marine life. Zostera often forms beds in bay mud in the estuarine setting. It is an important food for Brant Geese and Wigeons, and even (occasionally) caterpillars of the grass moth Dolicharthria punctalis.