Restoring Eelgrass (Zostera marina) from Seed: A Comparison of Planting Methods for Large-Scale Projects

摘要

Eelgrass (Zostera marina) seeds are being used in a variety of both small- and large-scale restoration activities and have been successfully used to initiate recovery of eelgrass in the Virginia seaside coastal lagoons, which lost eelgrass in the 1930s wasting disease pandemic (Orth et al. 2006a). However, a major bottleneck with the use of seeds has been the relatively low rate of seedling establishment, generally 10 percent or less of seeds placed in the field (Orth et al. 2003). A recently developed underwater seed planter (Traber et al. 2003) represents an alternative method that could improve seedling success compared to techniques used in previous Chesapeake Bay studies and elsewhere. The objective of this study was to compare the effectiveness of different techniques of seeding for use in large-scale projects: injecting seeds into submerged sediments with a mechanical seed planter and hand- broadcasting seeds on the sediment surface using divers.