Andy Torbet joins the growing ranks of seagrass advocates , doing his bit to help look after one of our most secretive sea creatures
UKDIVING TORBET ON THE TUBE
Field of dreams
Andy Torbet joins the growing ranks of seagrass advocates , doing his bit to help look after one of our most secretive sea creatures
In this column I recently wrote about my work as an Ambassador for The SeaLife Trust and my visit to The Cornish Seal Sanctuary . The Trust supports a long list of projects and other organisations , and recently I was fortunate enough to visit one such scheme seeking to protect an often-overlooked marine habitat , and one surprising creature that relies on it .
I confess that when I began diving , and for much of my underwater career , I overlooked the meadows of seagrass . As a zoologist
PHOTO : CHRIS BROWN
Examining seagrass roots
Chris Brown of Sea Life UK ( left ) explains how traditional anchors scour the seabed and seagrass habitat by initial academic training , I sought the bigger animal species and left the grass to the botanists .
Whereas coral reefs are often thought of as the rainforests of the sea due to their rich biodiversity , from a globally-important carboncycle point of view seagrass has far more in common with the great jungles than the reefs .
In fact , an area of seagrass will absorb 35 times more carbon than the same size area of rainforest . Although it only represents 0.2 % of the ocean floor , it accounts for 10 % of total oceanic carbon sequestration . But that ’ s not all . Seagrass fields also prevent coastal erosion and provide important nursery grounds for a wide variety of fish and invertebrate species , as well as being home to some very rare creatures . And it was the latter I had come to see . The seahorse .
Few people in the UK are even aware that we have native seahorse species around our shores . Our Spiny and Short Snouted Seahorses are under threat from habitat loss
64