Our Strange Plan To Restore This Ruined Mudflat

We've started a project to revitalize a place that not many people think about, let alone care about. But hidden just under our noses, every 6 hours and 12 minutes or so, a magical wonderland is revealed. An underwater meadow, full of life, a home to all kinds of creatures, a nursery for their young and a feeding ground for a wide variety of birds and marine life. But not all of these places are as good as they could be, which is of course where we come in. We spent the past 2 years surveying the earth, testing the soil and the water, figuring out the extent of the seagrass beds and the species mix and then comparing all of that to the historic data. We've been figuring out the different ways of transplanting seagrass and how to manage the ecological impact of this work. We've bought all the gear we need, we sorted out an office and created the relevant safety protocols to operate in the remote and dangerous intertidal mudflats. And after being awarded 2 grants totaling more than £620,000, we've built a team that is now ready to jump into action. So every time I arrive here at one of these mudflats, I'm reminded that part of our job at Mossy Earth is to kind of advocate for these places that are not obviously beautiful. I mean, you get here and you see loads of mud, you wouldn't want to sunbathe here, even if it weren't raining all the time in Scotland. You definitely can't swim that easy, I mean look how far, I can't even see where the water is at right now, that's how long this mudflat is. And it's just kind of generally looking a bit yucky, you know, it's a mudflat, the word mud, you know, it's not attractive to many people. But the truth is that this place here is really magical. The seagrass meadows, oyster reefs and seaweed forests are the foundation of this ecosystem, much like the coral reefs at our Indonesian project or the kelp forests we've worked on in Portugal. They act as a nursery for the ocean's young. This is one of the many reasons we are always looking for these places as our starting point in the restoration of an ecosystem. Fix the foundation and the rest will benefit. More of these keystone seagrass meadows will mean more nutrient cycling, more carbon storage, reduced coastal erosion and, crucially, more places for fish to reproduce, such as these pipefish that were simply everywhere in this meadow that Isla and Milo filmed. And then take a look at this part of the meadow. Can't see much, right? But take a closer look and an abundance of life is revealed. Here in the shimmering light, we find tons of tiny snails slowly munching away. We find shrimp and other invertebrates going about. We find worms, which leave these mounds behind. And even larger creatures, such as this snail here, carrying what seems like a whole family of barnacles on its back. Then among the oysters and the seaweed forests, there are all kinds of beautiful fish taking shelter in these shallow waters, such as this greater pipefish I filmed a couple of years back, as well as sea hares, beautiful green crabs, hermit crabs and these spindly-looking long-legged spider crabs that blend neatly into their environment. And when the tide recedes, all of this brings in the birds. Lots and lots of birds. We have the shorebirds, such as the oyster catcher that eat the bivalves that live here, or the red shanks, which are vulnerable to extinction in Europe and come to seagrass meadows to feed on worms, shrimp, snails and other small critters. Then we have the hunters that are out for bigger stuff, such as this patient grey heron calmly stalking the shoreline, or these agile terns diving down for a quick catch. But the most impressive one here is, of course, the mighty osprey, which the team often sees hunting at our project area, and which Isla managed to catch at the perfect moment. I mean, what an incredible bird to have around. And besides them, we also have various species of overwintering birds, such as these grey lag geese, and birds that just like to hang around, such as these cormorants that relax in between hunts out at sea, or various species of gulf. And when things are going well here, the fish abundance and general productivity of the ecosystem also attracts marine predators such as seals that come into these firths to hunt and relax, or dolphins that move in and out every day with the tide, and even the odd basking shark that indirectly benefits from a healthier and more productive coastal ecosystem. The key thing is, when it all works, this ecosystem is incredible, it's hidden in plain sight and it's magical. But when we started digging a bit deeper, the picture changed. When we first started looking at the intertidal areas across the Wilder Firths project area, we noticed that there were some places where seagrass was present, that looked quite similar to places where it was not present, and we couldn't really figure out why. We dug up an old report which showed that it used to be present in some of the places where we could no longer find it, and then we got to thinking, like, why is this happening and what can we do about it? It was this question which sent us on our way to develop the project here, which brings me to a point that I rarely mention, which is what it is like for us to come up with these projects. Because, at the start, it really can feel like trying to complete a puzzle without having all the pieces in the box. I mean, you see seagrass here, but not there, where it used to be on an old map. So you check the conditions to see what's up. They turn out to be similar, so did the stressor that destroyed these meadows pass, or is it still there but we can't find it? Should we try to restore it and see what happens, or should we just research further? What are the permits for all of this? All can take time and commitment to answer before we can even get started with the work itself. So as you'll see throughout this video, it has taken us more than two years with a significant investment of staff time and funding to get to this stage where we've been able to secure grants, build up a team, get all the necessary equipment to now start considering the rest restoration at scale. And the only reason we are able to tackle such a long-term commitment is because of the bedrock of support that we have from our Mossy Earth members that have a subscription with us. So as you watch this video, please bear that in mind, and if that would be something for you, then please consider becoming a member at mossy.earth. So at the start of this project, we had Ayla, and she was quickly joined by Francis, who worked on the project for a bit over a year to help us get started. During that period, they spent a lot of time surveying and trying to get some of these basic questions answered, or at least getting us to the stage where we know what we don't know. And it was at this point that they identified the first grant that made sense for us, which was the Nature Restoration Fund, managed by NatureScot. And after going through the process, they awarded us with £79,964, which we immediately put to good use by hiring Josie, who came in to increase capacity. The team then embarked on a big survey mission to map the extent of the seagrass beds in places where the data was deficient, and also to match this old study from 1989. This involved a lot of walking around in the mud, of course. So this here is one of the reasons it's quite hard to work out here. Mud is actually quite dangerous, so we've had to build all kinds of protocols to ensure that we are able to stay safe out here. Despite the proximity to roads, these mudflats feel dangerous and remote in their own way because they are so hard to access. So staying safe here involves good communication, the appropriate gear, and of course, a good plan. But to avoid walking it at all, we also started doing some drone mapping. To do this work through the grant, we hired James, a drone operator that took thousands of photos and created orthophoto mosaics of different sites, which we then tried to match with the underground data to refine the detection models. And after all of this surveying work, we were able to make a large data contribution to the Marine Recorder Database, which NatureScot, the nature advisor of the Scottish government, was really pleased to have. This survey allowed us to get an initial picture of where the seagrass used to be and where it is missing now, which is a great starting point. But to understand things in more depth, we also took sediment and water samples to compare all the different sites, and we did a really exciting partnership with the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks, who came over on a short expedition to see whether there are any relevant mycorrhizal fungi associated with seagrass, among other interesting fungi related questions. All of this ended up in an expedition report from SPUN and our final report for the NRF grant, both of which are available on our Wilder Firths project page, which you can find in the description. And then the final component of our work at this stage was to try out different planting and transplanting methods. So we carried out some trials earlier last year with seeding, cores and bare root transplants, and the intention is to make sure that the sediment, for example, at a site that we want to restore is suitable enough for the seagrass to survive when it's coming from somewhere else and to see that over time, is it going to survive in that area. Going through this process also helped us get a feel for some of the logistics involved and get a feel for the efficiency of each method. At this stage, the results were quite mixed with coring showing the highest potential, but as the tests were so small, we felt we needed to test at a larger scale to really understand how to approach this, which is where our next grant comes in. We applied to receive funding from the Scottish Marine Environmental Enhancement Fund, or SMEEF for short. Through them, we have been awarded £544,558.76 so far to plant 4.2 hectares of seagrass meadows over the course of the next three years, which is a really incredible opportunity. And what this grant from SMEEF really has allowed us to do is to finally build out our team, which is really important when you want to tackle a big task in a big area like this. Through this grant, we hired Milo to manage the seagrass project, Kat to manage the grant and engage the local community, and Lily and Claire to help with all the necessary fieldwork. Now, this six-person team is taking on a bigger challenge than what it looks like on the surface. It's not just about going out and planting 4.2 hectares. It is about trying to keep an eye on a large chunk of the marine ecosystem that is around the size of the country of Singapore, and then to pioneer restoration projects to revitalize any of the bits we know are degraded. So the potential scope for our work here is huge, which is why I want to lay down a simple two-stage plan for you to follow along. The first stage is to continue our effort to know this place inside out. That means continuing to survey the extent of the seagrass beds, even going into the subtitle areas with some diving equipment. It's all about being out there and seeing what is going on and checking when things change, but also taking the time to give each bay and meadow a health check. So we are undertaking reproductive health surveys to assess the amount of seeds the meadows are producing and the amount of flowers, and this helps us understand the impact any transplants are going to have on these big donor beds. This bit is key. Without knowing the lay of the land and the ecological capacity of these meadows, we could never determine whether we could use them as donors, or if they're simply too fragile. Through this extensive surveying work, we picked two healthy meadows to start with, at Oodle Bay, to help replant parts of the Cromarty Firth, and Longman Bay, to help replant parts of the Beaulie Firth. When we started looking at restoration, we were looking like in the Beaulie Firth, and this is just on the edge of the Inverness Firth, into the Beaulie Firth. It's a large donor bed with like 100 hectares to survey and take material from, and when we're thinking about limiting our impact, this was like the obvious choice for us because we've got such a large area to take from and monitor over time, and this is like, both species exist here, like both Zostra species and we have like Rupia maritima, so this just made sense with the diversity of species here and also the location, because there's a lot of science to suggest that the closer you are to your restoration site with your donor, the more likely it is to be successful. And that nearby recipient is Red Castle, which has similar conditions to Longman Bay, but a very limited seagrass cover at the moment. But how do we go about restoring this? This is where we get to the second branch of this work, which is to conduct restoration tests at a larger scale, namely the 4.2 hectares we are committed to planting at this point. In our NRF trial, we experimented with three techniques. Out of these three, we think that seeding and coring are both worth pursuing further in our case. On the seeding front, the team spent days and days out on the meadows collecting seed, often with the help of volunteers, which has been really great to have and has allowed us to collect approximately 183,000 seeds this season. But we could always have more, of course, so if you live around the Inverness area and you're keen to help, be sure to sign up using the form in the description. I'm in Isla's garden, which is also our seed processing area, so she's kindly donated her garden for what will probably be most of the autumn while we wait for all the seeds to develop so we can collect them. You can see here I've got some nice plastic trugs. This is our very simple way of separating seeds from the spades that we were collecting in the field. So this is what we're collecting in the field, these tiny little seed pods, and by letting them sit in these big tanks that are usually aerated and filled with sort of bubbling water, the seeds can develop in their own time and then drop out of the spade where we can then scoop them up. Now, we're yet to decide exactly how we will plant these seeds, but in the past we have sown them by hand and also using a caulking gut. On the coring front, we are starting our efforts right now, as this video goes out, to begin our work for the winter, with the first batches going in at Red Castle. The process is relatively simple, as it essentially involves extracting a plant with some soil around it and then replanting it in the new site, following this pattern of 5 equidistant clusters, and I have to say, right now I'm really curious to see whether the transplants will survive the winter and how they are looking in the spring, and that is when you can expect our next update on this project, covering the planting itself and the initial results. I'm really excited that we're going to be monitoring the state of these meadows, that we're going to continue to make sure that they are here, and that we're going to improve the places that might need some improving. This is a really exciting stage in this project, and I just wanted to say a big thank you, because the only reason we can do this, as I've said many times, is because of our Mossy Earth members, and if you're not yet a member, then please consider becoming one at mossy.earth. Until next time, cheers!