Our Blue Carbon Initiative
We are also planting eelgrass and restoration salt marsh as part of this Blue Carbon initiative. We started eelgrass planting in 2010 – we did a small pilot project north of the Royston Wrecks and planted 300 shoots with divers and shore volunteers. Recent surveys show that this planting has been a major success with more than a 300% increase in plants! Since then we have done many other plantings including a project with the Department of Defense where we planted over 2400 shoots! 2014 was the first year we did salt marsh plantings. We started with a pilot project to plant 300 square meters also in the Royston Wreck area. Salt marsh planting is a little more complicated than eelgrass planting. One reason is that many of the salt marsh areas have been inundated with Spartina patens an invasive species that we will need to remove and replace with native species.