Sea and Shore Line Grass Planting

Tampa Bay has depended heavily on the bay for recreational and commercial activities, overwhelming with unintentional and often illegal impacts that degrade our natural resources. As a result, Tampa Bay's natural environment has suffered dramatically. In particular our shoreline grasses and associated upland wetland habitat has been depleted by more than 40 percent from its original state.
Salt marsh communities are important habitat systems that grow on the intertidal fringe of the bay, preventing erosion, buffering uplands from storms, absorbing pollutants, and providing shelter and nursery areas for many fish and wildlife species. Marshes also serve as a vital link in the marine food web.

Salt marsh planting projects have become an environmental tool for restoring our lost habitat. Research and development now allows scientists to include many different habitats in marsh restoration projects. The concept of creating/enhancing/restoring habitat mosaics is now widely used, where a collection of habitat normally found in coastal systems, including uplands, transitional habitats, freshwater wetlands, open water, live bottom, sea grass, beds, low and high marshes, mud flats, salterns, and more is married together into one project.

The Southwest Florida Water Management District - Surface Water Improvement and Management Program has been highly successful in using this concept for habitat restoration and creation projects. In April of 1994, Tampa Bay Watch coordinated its first habitat restoration event to replace marsh communities in Boca Ciega Bay impacted by the August 1993 oil spill. The project involved more than 90 community volunteers and installed 5,000 salt marsh grasses. Since that time, much larger projects have been accomplished such as the ongoing restoration of the Cockroach Bay Aquatic Preserve. In addition, yearly programs have been established to plant grass in other areas in Tampa Bay such as Cypress Park.

Over the past 100 years, Tampa Bay has lost more than 80% of its sea grass beds due mostly to waste water discharges and dredging for port and residential waterfront development. This loss has severed a crucial link in the bay's food chain for fish and wildlife resources, causing the collapse of the bay's scallop and oyster fisheries, and major declines in bait and food shrimp, spotted sea trout, and red drum (redfish).

Sea grasses are flowering plants that live underwater and are mostly found in protected bays and lagoons. They are limited in their depth by water clarity because they require light and they also produce oxygen, similar to plants on the land. In Tampa Bay, sea grasses are mostly found along the shoreline fringe, not exceeding much over a 2-meter depth. At one time (late 1800s) it is estimated there were more than 75,000 acres of sea grass in the Tampa Bay, but as mentioned they have been disappearing at an alarming rate. Having reached a low point in 1982 of around 21,500 acres, the sea grass coverage in Tampa Bay has slowly been increasing and today we have nearly 28,000 acres. This increase in sea grass coverage is mostly due to bay-wide water quality improvements and reduced dredging and filling along with educational programs aimed at the importance of the beds and responsible boating.

In the 1996 publication "Charting the Course for Tampa Bay" by the Tampa Bay Estuary Program (TBEP), several goals for habitat restoration and protection were set. The long-term goal is to increase and preserve the quantity, quality, and diversity of sea grass communities through restoration of 12,350 acres of sea grass and protection of the bay's existing acreage. In addition, TBEP goals are also set for restoring a balance of wetland and associated upland habitats.

The specific targets include:

• restoration of a minimum of 100-acres of low-salinity tidal marsh every five years, for a total increase of 1,800 acres, and the preservation of the exiting habitat
• protection and enhancement of the bay's mangrove and salt marsh communities which total nearly 14,000 acres
• restoration over time of 150 acres of salt barren habitat
• protection of hard-bottom, oyster reef, and soft bottom communities

Organizations in the bay area including Tampa Bay Watch is dedicated toward restoring and protecting estuarine habitat. The krewe of the Nautilus has participated in some of the programs and have led in others. Many of TBW programs are directly geared to forward habitat restoration, such as conducting salt marsh restoration projects, growing plants for restoration projects with our wetland nursery program, installing oyster reefs along hardened shorelines, our sea grass restoration program, and many more.

Tampa Bay Watch has been building a sea grass Restoration Program for the past three summers. The program is designed to train high school and college volunteer interns in sea grass restoration techniques and educate them on the importance of protecting this vital habitat. Volunteers assist in harvesting the grasses from an approved donor site and transplanting them into an area of the bay with improving water quality but sparse sea grass coverage.

Two of the four common sea grasses in Florida are used in the restoration effort. Shoal grass, Halodule wrightii (shown above-left), is transplanted into shallow areas with improving water quality where historically sea grasses were present. Manatee grass, Syringodium filiforme (shown left), is transplanted into areas of sparse Halodule growth, in order to encourage sea grass diversity and natural succession.