Latest / How To Protect The Ocean / Crowdfunding Innovating Seagrass Restoration: The Underwater Seed Harvester Project

Transcript

Crowdfunding Innovating Seagrass Restoration: The Underwater Seed Harvester Project · How To Protect The Ocean

0:00
Oftentimes when we protect the planet and we start to look at the ocean and
0:03
restore habitats and protect habitats, there are a lot
0:06
of challenges that come in that way. And oftentimes we
0:10
have to automate things to make sure that we can do things more
0:13
efficiently and quicker. Today is
0:16
one of those times where we are looking at
0:20
a project from Project Seagrass to have a seed
0:23
harvester to help gather seeds from
0:27
seagrass meadows and be able to help use those seeds
0:30
to restore in other places because there are a lot of seagrass habitats
0:34
to this day that are still being degraded and we need to restore them. As
0:38
many of you know, seagrass habitats are extremely important coastal habitats. They
0:42
contribute to biodiversity. They're one of the most biodiverse habitats on
0:45
the planet, as well as our security of our coastline and
0:49
they're great blue carbon habitat, meaning that they sequester carbon
0:52
So it's great in the fight against climate change. So it's always important to
0:56
save these and protect these seagrass habitats. And Project Seagrass is
1:00
here to do that. And they came on the podcast. I asked them
1:03
on the podcast because I saw they're doing a crowd funder for this technology
1:07
to help better restore seagrass habitats. They want
1:12
to create and build a seed harvester for
1:15
seagrasses. And I think it was important to help them with
1:18
their crowd funder. So I thought I'd have... Dr. Richard Unsworth, who
1:22
is the scientific officer, the chief scientific officer for Seagrass,
1:26
Project Seagrass, on the podcast to discuss this
1:30
project and this crowdfunder so that you can get more information. And if
1:33
you feel comfortable and you're able to, I recommend you donate. I'm
1:36
gonna be donating as well, so I recommend that you donate to
1:40
this project. But here is the episode on the seed harvester. Enjoy
1:44
the episode. Let's start the show. Hey
1:51
everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm
1:54
your host, Andrew Lewin, and this is a podcast where you find out what's happening with
1:58
the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean, and what you can do to live
2:01
for a better ocean by taking action. Now on today's episode, we
2:04
have a very special one because we don't get to do this all the time. One of the things
2:08
that I did want to do when I started this podcast was be
2:11
able to help people complete their projects and be able to communicate
2:15
those projects. And with Project Seagrass, since the get-go, I've always
2:19
wanted to be involved in helping them spread the word because they've done such a great
2:22
job at I'm going the
2:43
sea. Please
3:00
go to the link in the show notes or in the description depending on where you're watching
3:03
this or listening to this and feel free to donate. They
3:07
have about 10 days left as of this posting this recording and
3:11
it's really important that you do. So I appreciate anybody who
3:14
does this. Here's the interview with Dr. Richard Unsworth talking about
3:18
the underwater seed harvester to restore seagrasses. Enjoy and we'll
3:21
talk to you after. Hey Richard, welcome to the How to Protect the Ocean
3:27
Yes, always happy to talk seagrass and lovely to
3:31
be back on this show. We chatted
3:34
a few years ago and it's nice to catch up again to talk about
3:41
Absolutely. I can't wait to talk about this project. We're
3:45
going to be talking about a crowdfunding project that Project Seagrass is
3:48
putting on. It is called Underwater Sea Harvester to
3:51
restore seagrass. This is something that's pretty
3:55
innovative. Has there been anything like this that you've seen before?
3:59
Well, yes, there has, to be honest. We
4:02
didn't lead the way here. The
4:06
Virginia Institute of Marine Science actually led the
4:09
way with something like this 20 years
4:13
ago. They built a sort of a prototype
4:16
system where they were working in
4:20
very, very sheltered and consistently shallow habitats.
4:24
And they were able to do something with a little bit more
4:28
of a sort of a more simple mechanism
4:32
and We couldn't we couldn't facilitate that so because
4:36
we're working slightly different less stable
4:42
Very nice. I love that. I love that. We're going to talk more about the
4:46
Project Seagrass, this project about seagrass, of course. And
4:49
I can't wait to do that. But why don't we just step back
4:52
a little bit? I just want people, I just want to remind people of what
4:59
So I'm Richard Unsworth, associate professor at Swansea University,
5:03
but I'm also the chief science officer for
5:07
Project Seagrass. So Project Seagrass is the the
5:10
only internationally focused charity that's
5:13
completely dedicated to saving
5:17
the world's seagrass. That's all we do. We
5:20
do research, we do conservation with
5:26
that broader aim of trying to conserve and
5:32
It's amazing. And the work that you guys have done has been absolutely amazing. You
5:36
continue to lead. I feel like a lot of the
5:39
innovative, like, I guess that the initiatives that are
5:43
going around with Seagrass, I mean, we've had a part, a lot
5:46
of your team on the broadcast in the past to talk about mapping
5:50
seagrass and sort of working at workshops with seagrass.
5:54
And it's been absolutely amazing to see the progress of the organization
5:58
just growing and building. And I just, I love seeing that.
6:01
So super happy to have you back to be able to talk
6:05
about another incredible project. So
6:08
where did this, so the idea I guess came from this initial
6:12
prototype, but where did it build off from?
6:15
Like why did you guys decide, hey, this is something that we can build upon
6:19
Let's try putting ourselves in the tech world a little bit and
6:25
As it stands, each year we and
6:29
other organizations send lots of people out into
6:33
the shallow waters around Europe, America,
6:36
other places around the world, collecting seagrass seeds.
6:41
These CRS seeds are not like, you're not picking individual seeds, but
6:45
you're picking a spade of seeds. Think
6:49
of something a bit more analogous to a
6:55
group of seeds on a stem of wheat. So
6:59
we're picking those reproductive shoots containing
7:03
those spades from CRS meadows and in
7:07
shallow waters for replanting this
7:11
vital habitat. And sometimes
7:15
that's people wading in shallow water. Sometimes
7:18
it's people snorkeling. Sometimes it's people diving. But
7:22
the reality here is that it's
7:25
hard work. There's a lot of effort that goes into collecting
7:29
these seeds. Managing
7:33
people is a lot of work. But we're fortunate enough
7:36
to have a lot of volunteers and people who want to come and help and get involved with
7:40
that. But still, it means that. Improving
7:45
seagrass restoration, making it bigger is very much dependent upon
7:49
how many people you can get involved in. You know, there
7:52
are limitations around that sometimes in terms of safety, in terms of
7:55
other factors playing into it. So to
7:58
actually think bigger, we needed to to
8:02
find a way that we could collect these seeds in a more automated
8:06
mechanized manner and obviously the
8:11
idea of taking some sort of glorified lawnmower to
8:15
some seagrass to collect some seagrass seeds is quite a
8:18
horrific idea but that's what we're
8:22
talking about here and we
8:26
looked at the system that had been developed in
8:30
Virginia and We
8:35
spoke with the regulators in Wales,
8:38
in the UK, about developing something on
8:42
us. And unsurprisingly, they
8:45
were pretty much horrified at the idea of us taking a cutting device
8:48
to seagrass. On one hand, we're saying we need to protect seagrass.
8:53
And on the other hand, we're saying, oh, can we
8:56
take a little moment to it? So there's a bit of a
9:00
mismatch there, shall we say. But what we were actually
9:04
advocating for is having a, not
9:08
a lawnmower that cuts the seagrass to really short, but
9:11
something that basically just gives the seagrass a haircut. And
9:15
that haircut is a sort of 20 centimeter
9:19
depth, the length of seagrass. And the
9:22
idea here is that particular parts of the summer period,
9:26
you get a huge bloom of Of
9:31
these seeds being produced by by seagrass and at particular time
9:36
Of that period they'll be floating up into
9:39
the water column sticking pride proudly out and
9:44
at that point in time if you can Basically give
9:47
the the seagrass a haircut at a particular height Then
9:51
you'll collect a huge amount of these of
9:55
these seagrass seeds But there
9:59
is this this sort of fear of impacting
10:04
the seagrass. So we had a bit of a
10:07
step back and what we did is we
10:10
developed a very sort of basic
10:15
prototype, shall we call it, of a cutting machine
10:20
and we developed with the regulator in
10:23
Wales, Natural Resources Wales, together with them we developed a
10:27
whole experimental project of like how we could determine
10:31
whether this thing was going to impact the seagrass or not. So
10:36
we had a whole load of transects lines under the
10:39
water that we set up that were permanently marked.
10:44
And we had divers going along some of these with a pair of shears,
10:48
cutting the seagrass. We
10:51
had somewhere, we had this sled, this
10:55
prototype, which was cutting, didn't operate very well, but it operated enough
10:58
that we could tow it for 20 meters and cut
11:01
some seagrass. We compared these
11:05
different trials against the
11:08
abundance of natural seagrass that hadn't been impacted.
11:14
And so we run that program for a couple of
11:17
years, did it repeat. And what we saw is
11:20
that there is no impact of that cutter
11:25
because basically we're just giving it a haircut. And in
11:29
some ways, you know, that might be a surprise, but in
11:32
other ways not, because seagrasses all
11:36
around the world, whether you talk about them in the tropics or you're talking about them
11:40
in temperate climes, They're grazed. Animals
11:44
like to eat seagrass. Of course. So we have Brent geese in the
11:47
temperate realm and some of our colleagues who
11:50
work on the Isle of Wight were recently down there and they witnessed
11:54
lots of swans grazing, chomping away all
11:58
afternoon at the seagrass. In the tropics we see dugongs, we
12:01
see turtles, there's some types of fish. So it's
12:04
not really a surprise that if you chop
12:08
the seagrass it grows back. And we're
12:11
not digging up the rhizomes or the roots. We're just basically
12:15
cutting the shoots to a
12:18
reduced height. And what we saw is that there is no impact.
12:22
The seagrass remains healthy. It's doing very well. And
12:26
when you compare that seagrass against natural populations
12:30
that haven't been impacted, there is no difference.
12:34
So it's great to see that and we've just
12:37
recently written up all that information into an academic
12:41
paper because we thought it was a key point to be able to prove
12:45
that what we're doing is not impacting the
12:50
seagrass. So we're in this situation, we've
12:53
got a a prototype that it worked
12:57
a bit, but enough to run the
13:00
trial. We now had
13:04
greater assurance that if we did
13:08
this, we're not going to impact the seagrass. The regulators are
13:12
beginning to understand that. We're able to
13:15
get a bit more permission to use a system at larger scale.
13:19
We just need that system. And that's
13:24
Yeah, great project. I would imagine the
13:27
cutting of the seagrass would almost be a bit of like a pruning in a garden, right?
13:31
Where you're just pruning, you want it to grow back. What
13:35
are the rates, and I know it's probably different for each species of
13:38
seagrass, but what are the rates of growth? Do they grow back fairly
13:42
quickly when you did that study year over year? Did you find like the
13:50
The following year there was no difference. Yeah, and and
13:54
it was even even after we'd cut it
13:57
was quite difficult to actually see some of the impacts because
14:02
As we were had taking a blade over the seagrass a lot of the seagrass
14:05
has also been pushed down So we didn't cut it all And
14:09
so you actually you don't tend to cease even
14:13
that much of an impact but but you know new
14:17
shoots pop up every, every few weeks, you know,
14:20
um, you'll get like in the height of summer, they'll be growing, uh,
14:24
very rapidly, you know, uh, over a few weeks period,
14:28
you're going to get three, four centimeters of growth on a, on a shoot. So it's
14:31
like, you know, really, really rapid turnover. So,
14:35
um, cuts it. And, you know, so long as you're not damaging the
14:38
actual root, the rhizome that's underpinning it, then
14:46
Fantastic. Now, for the seeds that you do collect, and
14:50
whether it's by humans harvesting them or the seed
14:58
So at Project Seagrass, we have a whole range of
15:01
programs around the UK. Some of those are very
15:06
applied restoration, where we're trying to actually conduct
15:10
large-scale restoration. Some of them are very experimental,
15:14
where we're trying to learn about some of
15:17
the intricacies in the ways we replant seagrass.
15:21
But broadly, all that seed is being used to
15:25
bring back these habitats, because whether it's in
15:29
the UK, whether it's in Indonesia, whether
15:32
it's in Japan, wherever around the
15:35
world, we have seen huge amounts of seagrass loss. Seagrass
15:40
is often referred to as the canary in the coal mine.
15:44
or the canary in the ocean, really, that where
15:50
we've lost seagrass, it's really an indicator of
15:53
the quality of the environment that it's
15:56
living in. And unfortunately, we've degraded our coasts all
16:00
around the world. And we continue to do this. It's
16:03
not it's not like a just a historic thing and there was a lot of historic
16:07
loss But it's something that is going we continue to see
16:10
it There you know obviously I
16:14
work in in the UK for a lot of my my time and
16:18
So there's a lot of focus there, but we you know we see Harbors
16:22
estuaries where seagrass is declining because
16:26
of poor water quality but what
16:30
we're now doing is we're trying to bring back seabass in places where the
16:33
environment has improved. So there's lots of places where you know it
16:37
disappeared a long time ago or you know the environments
16:40
have changed in lots of places so just because it was damaged here
16:46
doesn't mean we can't plant it over there if the environment is right for it now.
16:50
So we're trying to to replant these these habitats
16:53
bring them back so they can form important fish habitats, support
16:58
biodiversity, support climate change, all sorts of different factors
17:05
Yeah, for sure. And which is all admirable. We need seagrass for
17:09
a lot of different reasons. As we've heard
17:12
from Project Seagrass before, looking at biodiversity, it's
17:16
a huge biodiversity haven for a lot of different species. It's
17:21
blue carbon habitats as well being used for that. It's
17:27
good for coastal security, as well as feeding other habitats
17:31
and whatnot. Seagrass is probably one of the most important habitats
17:35
that we see all over the world, like you mentioned before, temperate and tropical
17:38
areas. And they definitely need a
17:42
lot of protection. Because we don't see them all the time, we don't recognize that
17:45
they're being disturbed quite a bit and basically
17:51
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Now,
17:56
with this, how much do you anticipate this
18:00
seagrass harvester to collect? How many seeds in
18:05
a day or in a pass? Have you guys had the chance to calculate that
18:16
What we do know is that in
18:20
a healthy seagrass meadow, sometimes
18:23
you have anywhere
18:28
between 100 and 10,000 seeds per
18:31
meter square. Right, right. So
18:36
I think the 10,000 is more at the extreme end. And
18:40
that's from data in your neck of the woods where people have,
18:44
the sea grass tends to grow a bit bigger and a bit thicker, and
18:47
it's got a huge production of seeds. But we're typically finding over
18:51
a thousand seeds per meter squared in the UK. And
18:56
that means that if we're pulling it over, you know,
19:00
100 meters squared, then suddenly,
19:04
actually, we're getting a lot of seeds. If
19:11
we take it over bigger areas, then maybe we're picking up
19:14
millions of seeds. Obviously, there's
19:19
other factors coming into play here. There's other uses
19:22
of those environments. Also, we
19:26
need to be mindful of how we ensure
19:31
that we don't cut up a lot of fish or different
19:34
other animals. and
19:39
but you know there's lots of ways we can do that but I
19:42
think that broadly we should be
19:45
able to collect millions of seeds in
19:49
a quite rapid manner and you
19:53
know when you're talking about meadows that are sort of you
19:56
know over 100 hectares in size and you know doing
20:00
this over a number of transects it's actually a very
20:04
small proportion of the area because you're not going to actually take a
20:08
cut to a whole meadow, you're going to put it over a small
20:12
area of that meadow and ultimately take
20:19
Absolutely, yeah, and I think that's that that's important for for people to know
20:22
because these metals are huge that when you're when you're in them, and I think that's that's
20:26
that's really important to reiterate so You
20:29
know, it's it's really great to think that you know, obviously this
20:33
this device will be able to collect so much more so
20:36
many more seeds Especially when you look at compared to
20:40
if you have volunteers out grabbing those seeds as well plus
20:44
a lot less of a disturbance when you have one You
20:47
know, one machine than snorkelers or what have you, people going
20:51
through the meadows. How
20:55
is this device used? Is it like by remote
20:58
control or is it towed behind a vessel or
21:04
Yes, it's towed behind a vessel at
21:08
a sort of half a knot to one knot maximum
21:12
speed. We've done similar
21:15
things where we've got other types of sleds that we pull behind
21:19
a boat and sometimes what we actually do
21:23
is we attach the boat
21:28
to a mooring or anchor it and
21:31
basically we winch the boat slowly into that
21:36
anchor so we've got a very controlled speed. Because
21:41
that's the challenge is that if you put
21:46
the throttle slightly down, you can
21:49
kind of just sort of jump it a bit. So
21:54
the idea of using a sort of an anchor point is
21:57
a better way of doing it. And then you can just have
22:00
a very, very slow winching sort
22:06
Yes, more of that constant movement across the
22:09
metal. That's great. That's great to see. It's interesting,
22:13
too, because you don't think about these things a lot of times when
22:16
you're planning it. You have to be out in the field, and you have to know how to
22:19
work it, and you have to know how it would react to the vessel.
22:24
how it would react to an anchor point, and explore these
22:27
different aspects. How long, with the prototype that
22:31
you had, as rough as it was, how long did it take you to
22:34
figure these things out? How many times were you, I
22:39
Yes, and I guess the
22:42
first time we actually trialed this, it
22:46
wasn't just the fact that we were putting a This
22:49
crazy sled into the water for the first time, but we're actually we
22:53
had a some funding to buy a brand new boat and
23:00
It's always very good for working in
23:03
shallow waters, but where actually it's
23:07
sort of when you get a bit of wind, it becomes a bit of a sail. So there
23:12
was lots of trials and tribulations along the way, shall we say. We had
23:19
some lessons learned. We got there
23:23
in the end, but it's, yeah. With all these sorts of things, if you You
23:29
want to develop something new, you've got to be willing to
23:38
Absolutely. Patience is definitely a virtue when it comes to
23:42
creating something new like this. What's interesting
23:46
is I haven't seen anything like, you guys have done some pretty interesting things
23:50
at Project Seagrass, putting the mapping platform
23:54
together and so forth. What made you decide to
23:57
take on this project in itself with a prototype?
24:01
I mean, does it require, like, did you have somebody
24:05
who's like has an engineering background or, you know, was this
24:11
Well, it came out of a project that we
24:14
were running in another part of Wales,
24:20
in Milford Haven, where we planted a lot of seagrass, used a lot of
24:23
volunteers. And we were working quite closely with
24:28
the charity WWF. All right. And they
24:31
were sort of they'd been involved with it. And one of their funding officers
24:36
was actually quite a character and
24:40
a guy called Jim Nichols. He he came out with us
24:44
and it was like, well, you know, this is this is this
24:47
is hard work, all this hard graft. Like maybe we
24:50
could get some funding to to have a project that's mechanized
24:55
particular elements because this isn't the only bit of this story that's we've
24:58
been trying to to mechanize but by
25:01
a long road so we developed a project
25:05
proposal with with him and something
25:08
called the Garfield Western Foundation. They were great
25:12
in supporting a project to develop
25:16
that pilot concept. And we also played
25:19
with other things, building some sleds to pump seeds
25:23
into the sediment, building some
25:27
aquaria that was like, which allows us to process the
25:30
seeds because once you collect them, There's
25:34
other laborious jobs that go with that. So
25:38
we had some funding to do all these different things, and that's
25:42
why we sort of started developing these ideas of how
25:45
can we mechanize this. And so we're able
25:48
to run that project where we worked with the regulators to
25:52
do all that testing and to develop that pilot. But we're
25:56
now at the point where we've demonstrated that
26:03
That's amazing. It's got to be quite exciting to come to this point after
26:07
all those years of putting this together and thinking about this and fidgeting
26:11
around with how to tell it and what it should look like and how to
26:14
design it. You know, as I look at the website for
26:17
the crowd funder. You're close. You're very
26:21
close to the goal, to your goal. And we're in about the last
26:24
week, week and a half, probably the last week proper to
26:28
be able to get this funding. Once
26:32
you get this funding, and we're going to say when because I'm
26:36
confident that you'll get it because I know a lot of people in our audience would
26:39
love to be a part of seeing this story develop
26:45
as a micro-funder and so forth. What's the
26:48
plan once the funding happens? You're going to go out
26:55
So we've been working with a company
26:59
called Tandem Ventures. They're a bit of a quirky
27:02
group of people who do all sorts of
27:05
things from building jetpacks, to design a
27:10
range of kits. So
27:14
they're engineers, they're people with those natural skills to
27:17
build and engineer things. So the aim is
27:20
to then, you know, deliver and try
27:24
to actually pull this design together and
27:28
then actually then next summer ultimately test
27:32
it. And that's the key part
27:36
there is to be able to test it next year. I
27:41
guess the crowd funder is the minimal point of what
27:44
we're hoping for and it would be great if we were able
27:48
to raise a bit more so we can do a bit more next summer.
27:52
But the key thing is to get a truly operating
27:55
piece of kit that is no longer at a prototype
27:59
level and we can actually roll that out. The
28:08
person who's been heading up this project within our team, Sam Rees,
28:12
he's been working with Tandem and developing ideas
28:16
and that's why we've got to this point that
28:20
we can actually try and go for this crowdfunder and try and
28:25
really run it out because Sam
28:30
has been playing with all these different bits of kit It's
28:33
like we've learned each different stage and now we
28:38
just needed someone with the technical know-how
28:42
to turn those concepts,
28:46
ideas, and learning into something that is
28:50
That's amazing. That's awesome. Now once this is built,
28:55
Is there another study that's going to be done year over year to compare with
28:59
the original prototype and to see the differences and obviously sort
29:04
of go through some iterations to make this new prototype
29:08
Yes, that's the need to
29:12
hopefully go beyond the crowd funders is the
29:16
target so we can actually do a lot more of that comparisons we can
29:20
deliver with it. There
29:24
will be fine tuning even when you have an operational piece
29:30
of equipment. How we pull
29:34
it and all the different things that will
29:38
come up. To be able to pull
29:42
a tow over a long distance we
29:47
would need to do assessment work on that first so we don't ram
29:51
it over a rock. So
29:56
we have to do bits and pieces like that. But that's
29:59
the broader aim is to be able to refine it and work
30:04
with it and then use it in other places and that's important
30:08
because there's other jurisdictions just within the UK
30:12
where some of the regulators are
30:16
a little more suspicious than others and a
30:19
little more embracing. So there's some
30:24
room for trying to work with
30:27
those guys. But there's other researchers around Europe,
30:32
about North America, other parts of the world who might
30:36
be interested to have a go and use something like this.
30:39
So who knows where it'll go. Our
30:44
broader aim as an organization is to save
30:48
the world's seagrass, but that's something that's a very long-term goal, and
30:51
that's something that we don't do alone. That's about partnerships, it's
30:55
about working with organizations all around the world, and if
30:58
we can develop knowledge and equipment and things that other
31:02
people can run with, then that's what we
31:06
want. So if someone uses something like
31:13
Absolutely. That was going to be one of my
31:17
questions. There was an ROV that
31:20
was developed a number of years ago and it was by
31:23
a company called Open ROV. They made it small and
31:27
they made it compact and they made it essentially that anybody can buy. I
31:30
think it was like $1,000 or $1,500. There was also an
31:35
option to build it yourself and so it was like a DIY kit
31:38
for like $600 or $700. And then at one point,
31:43
somebody backed it. And James Cameron actually backed it
31:46
and said, hey, I'm going to buy 1,000 of these and you
31:49
can give it to all these different organizations so
31:53
that they can also use it and they can gain access to it and use it for conservation
31:56
projects. is, I know that we're in the very beginning stages
32:00
of this prototype trying to get it funding and built, you
32:03
know, so that it's usable. But is that the idea going
32:07
forward? You know, as you mentioned, you know, if somebody in Japan wants to do it, or
32:10
somebody Indonesia wants to use something very similar to that, is
32:13
that the in the future plans of saying if we can make
32:17
this really compact and make it easy to either build or
32:21
use by other people, this is something that could be commercialized
32:25
and shared with a lot of other
32:31
I don't think we'd want to commercialize it per se, because I don't think that,
32:38
Yeah. Ourselves. But, you know, if
32:42
we could share it with others, then yes, absolutely. And one
32:46
of our big things is about knowledge sharing. And, you know, it's
32:50
important that as scientists, you write things up,
32:53
you share it and it doesn't matter
32:57
sometimes whether that's a success or a failure, you
33:00
need to share it and we'd
33:04
love to be able to give it to others. It
33:08
won't be a global tool because seagrasses in
33:11
some parts of the world don't grow in the
33:14
same way that you can collect
33:18
the seeds in this manner. So a lot
33:21
of the tropical seagrasses don't produce seed in
33:24
the same way, so it
33:27
wouldn't necessarily equate. both
33:33
northern and southern temperate regions, there's a
33:37
lot of sea grass where they're
33:40
growing in a similar way. So I think there's opportunities there for
33:43
sure. Great. And Zostra marina, known as eelgrass, which
33:47
is what we're focusing it on, is
33:54
Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty prolific around the world. Yeah.
34:01
Very nice, very nice. Now I have to, I have to ask, I mean, this is, I
34:05
know this project is a serious project you've been working on for quite some time, but
34:08
you're at this stage. How excited are you and the team to
34:15
Oh we're stoked, it's an exciting project, it's
34:18
really nice to know that people want to support us and
34:22
you know I think in running a charity
34:26
it's like, it's amazing how people
34:30
come to the fore and want to support you and people, you
34:33
know, all sorts of different walks of life and different sort of scenarios.
34:37
whether they're wealthy or not.
34:41
We get all sorts of different donors and it's amazing to
34:45
see how people will support the work that you're doing because
34:49
I think there's a lot of eco-anxiety out there as
34:53
well. There's a lot of people wanting to do something and in some
34:57
walks of life people can do things and change change things, but
35:01
in others they can't. Actually supporting a charitable organization
35:05
to do something like this is a
35:09
nice thing. It's something to never assume
35:15
you deserve as a charity, but it's lovely to see it, where
35:20
people are actually giving their hard-earned money to support
35:25
an activity that can improve the status of
35:29
Yeah, absolutely. And I'll be honest, I think it's a testament to your
35:33
team in the work that you've done in the past as well as continue
35:36
to do and be very transparent of the work
35:40
that you've been able to do. Not only do you
35:43
have a great comms team, but you have people on the team that love
35:47
Seagrass, love to share their work on Seagrass and their thoughts. And
35:50
I think that's really helped gather you know, more
35:54
eyes on the work that you're doing, and it's showing already
35:58
in this part. There's still quite a ways to go, you know,
36:02
and there's 11 days left as of this recording, and I think we're going to be publishing
36:05
when there's 10 days left. So I, you know, I want to
36:08
tell people, like, I've got a lot of people who are like, hey, you know, I don't
36:12
have a lot of money to donate to large, large projects, but
36:15
this is a way, the crowdfunding for things like this is a way that you can
36:19
donate little bits and bits, and it'll go towards
36:22
a larger project that can help restore seagrasses in the future.
36:26
I think this is an investment that's definitely worthwhile, and
36:30
I know I'm gonna be donating, and I'm looking forward to doing that. And when
36:34
I saw this project, I was like, oh, we gotta have somebody from the team on
36:38
to be able to talk about this and to be able to help just push it over. September
36:44
Yep, that's the end date. I
36:49
would love to have people's support. It's hugely appreciated. We're
36:55
aware that it's never easy to give
36:59
hard-earned funds away, but it's hugely appreciated when
37:03
Yeah, absolutely. I've done episodes before on eco-anxiety, climate
37:07
anxiety, and this is part of how you can help
37:11
and how you can ease off some of that anxiety. There
37:15
are people out there that are doing some great work and doing their best to help
37:19
with the planet, help with the environment, and restore seagrass as
37:22
part of that. As I mentioned at the beginning, it's great as a
37:25
habitat for biodiversity. as well as a blue carbon
37:29
habitat to help sequester carbon out of the atmosphere. And so this
37:33
is going to be an important investment into our future. So I highly recommend
37:36
people to donate. So to do that,
37:40
I'm going to put a link in the show notes and people can go over and
37:43
donate. Do this soon. Don't wait. And even if
37:47
you see they're getting close to the goal, as Richard said, If they
37:51
go over, that's okay, because they'll use those funds for more studies and
37:54
so forth. So don't worry about just getting to the goal. Just donate what
37:57
you can and what you're able to afford, and let's see this
38:00
thing get going, and I'm looking forward to seeing its progress. So Richard, thank
38:04
you so much for joining us on today's episode. We really appreciate
38:08
the work that you and your team continue to do, and we look forward to having
38:14
Thank you very much for having me, and it's lovely to catch
38:17
up. hear your podcasts which are
38:21
always an interesting addition
38:28
Thank you, we really appreciate it.
38:32
Thank you Richard for joining us today. on the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I
38:36
really appreciate you coming on, explaining why we need a seed
38:39
harvester, why it's important, how much more efficient it
38:43
will be, how many more seeds it will collect, and what
38:46
we need to do, and sort of the call to action of why we need
38:49
to protect and restore seagrasses, not just in the UK,
38:53
not just in Canada, not just in the US, but all over the world. And I really appreciate
38:57
the work that Project Searest have done. You and your team have been fantastic. And
39:01
this crowdfunder at this point is 71% funded
39:05
at this point of this recording. And I'm hoping it'll be funded for
39:09
like beyond 100%. And I hope we are a part of
39:13
that as an audience. And so, you know, a lot of people that I've had, that
39:16
I've engaged with in this audience have said, hey, you know, if there's a
39:20
way that we can be part of projects or be able to contribute
39:23
to projects, we would love to do that. This is one of those ways. And
39:27
so I highly recommend that you go to the link in the show notes as well, or
39:30
in the description if you're watching this on YouTube, and feel free to donate
39:34
whatever you can. There's different amounts. There's incentives
39:38
for different amounts, but we really appreciate anything that you can donate. Go
39:42
over to the show notes as well as in the description if
39:45
you're watching this on YouTube. And I want to thank you so much for
39:49
joining me on today's episode of the How to Protect the Ocean podcast. Thank
39:52
you so much for your donation if you decide to donate, if you can
39:55
donate, and just listening. I really appreciate you just listening to this. And if you know
39:59
people who are interested in this kind of stuff, just share it around and maybe they will donate as well
40:02
and support this project. So thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the
40:06
How to Protect the Ocean podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Lewin. Have a great day. We'll talk