A French city cut its marine pollution — and its seagrass bounced back Neptune grass is generally regarded as the most ecologically important seagrass and shallow-water habitat in the Mediterranean Sea. It suffered a severe decline during the 20th century, and there have...

Tres bien Marseille! Rebounding seagrass after pollution reduction is my news to me good news for April 15 #OceanOptimism #EarthOptimism news.mongabay.com/2026/04/a-fr...

Seagrass meadows around Whakatū / Nelson are quietly teeming with life 🌱🌊

Among the blades of karepō live worms, amphipods, shellfish, and crabs—powering coastal food webs from the sediment up.
Layered, connected, and dynamic—seagrass is far more than a plant. #RestoreTheMeadows #CawthronInstitute

Great to host the Clare Foundation this week to share our #RestoreTheMeadows work. We visited a seagrass meadow and our nursery at the #Cawthron Aquaculture Park, showing how research translates to practical restoration while supporting Te Tau Ihu iwi, students, and community outreach.

#InternationalWomensDay

Our work wouldn’t be possible without the support of mana whenua and our amazing partners: Clare Foundation, OneFortyOne, Port Nelson, Friends of Nelson Haven and Tasman Bay, @waikatouniversity.bsky.social, Nelson City Council. We’re also grateful to all who have previously supported this project.

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Thank you Te Atiawa for welcoming me onto your whenua and sharing your stories and knowledge with me.

#CawthronInstitute #SeagrassRestoration #MarineConservation #Investinseagrass

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Moments like these really show why this mahi matters. This project is the first step in a long-term, collaborative effort to restore, monitor, and protect these important ecosystems — bringing together science, mātauranga Māori, and community leadership. 🫱🏼‍🫲🏽

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But human pressure is clear. We saw vehicle, boats and kayaks moving directly over the meadow. A campsite sits right on its edge, increasing access and impact.

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What made it special was sharing kai and hearing stories of those growing up around the bay. Once muddy and smelly, now covered in seagrass. Seeing that change was positive.

#RestoreTheMeadow’s first iwi-led seagrass project in Te Tau Ihu, #Aotearoa is underway!

Last week, I had the privilege to work in Whatamango Bay with Te Ātiawa o te Waka-a-Māui Trust to map and survey the #seagrass meadow; the first time this site has been surveyed since 2018.

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🌱 This #WorldSeagrassDay we'll be celebrating amazing growth from this year’s seagrass pasties 🌊✨
Planted in January → thriving today.
Next stop: the Tees Estuary, where they’ll:
💧 Improve water quality
🐟 Create habitat for marine life

Seagrass = ecosystem superhero. 💚
#Seagrass #Restoration

Follow @world-seagrass.bsky.social and @seagrasswatch.org for all things seagrass related!

Our work wouldn’t be possible without the support of mana whenua and our amazing partners: Clare Foundation, OneFortyOne, Port Nelson, Friends of Nelson Haven and Tasman Bay, @waikatouniversity.bsky.social, Nelson City Council. We’re also grateful to all who have previously supported this project.

Happy #WorldSeagrassDay! 🌱

Small plants. Big impact.

Today we recognise the vital role #seagrass meadows play in #Aotearoa New Zealand’s coastal ecosystems.

Support restoration. Reduce pollution. Spread awareness.

Protect our seagrass meadows. 💙

#RestoreTheMeadows #SeagrassRestoration

Our paper on using two centuries of herbarium specimens to characterize morphological variation in Egregia menziesii is now out, open-access! onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... #PhycologyFriday

Kelp has many potential uses—in food, as a bio-stimulant for crops, and even as biofuel. A nascent aquaculture industry is working to meet demand, with a little help from WHOI researchers who developed an automated seeder to cut down on farmers’ time and exposure to the elements.

Our work wouldn’t be possible without the support of mana whenua and our amazing partners: Clare Foundation, OneFortyOne, Port Nelson, Friends of Nelson Haven and Tasman Bay, @waikatouniversity.bsky.social, Nelson City Council. We’re also grateful to all who have previously supported this project.

Want to help protect seagrass meadows? 🌱 Here are a few friendly tips!
#RestoreTheMeadows #Seagrass
#MarineRestoration

Best way to end the first week back? Hands and knees in the morning light hunting for the last flowers of the season. 🌸

Big thanks to @PortNelson for the support—we're chasing those chunky stage 3 seeds to top up the tally. Over 20k flowers collected this year! 🤯

#RestoreTheMeadows spent Fri–Sat at Waimea Inlet with amazing volunteers from the Boathouse Society collecting seagrass flowers 🌿 Seeds from these will support nursery experiments. It takes many seeds, so we’re grateful for the help!

An art and a science: Scripps Oceanography showcases 5,000 seaweed pressings UC San Diego’s Smith Seaweed Ecology Lab is digitizing its collection of more than 5,000 pressings and making it accessible to the public

Seaweed pressing as an art and a science: our newly reestablished herbarium collection at Scripps and the history behind it #Phycology

Our work wouldn’t be possible without the support of mana whenua and our amazing partners: Clare Foundation, OneFortyOne, Port Nelson, Friends of Nelson Haven and Tasman Bay, @waikatouniversity.bsky.social, Nelson City Council. We’re also grateful to all who have previously supported this project.

Flower collections are in full force! Thank you to every volunteer and community member supporting our #SeagrassRestoration work. From collection efforts to educational events, you're building a healthier future for our #oceans. Together you’ve contributed 525 outreach hours!🌱

#RestoreTheMeadows

Haere mai, welcome, Yuki Hughes to the #RestoretheMeadows research team! Yuki is joining us as a Cawthron Institute Summer Scholar and will be helping collect and process seagrass flowers, as well as running a district experiment to understand pollination of seagrass flowers in a lab setting.

Dr. Kirsty Smith honouring the lifetime achievements of legendary Dr Lesley Rhodes at #ASPAB 🧫🔬👩🏻‍🔬🧪

#WomenInScience #Cawthron #microalgae

Great talk by @ashtyn-isaak.bsky.social on her PhD work looking at effects of MHWs and thermal priming on coralline #algae 🪸 #ASPAB

So neat to get to present the progress and future directions of our #RestoretheMeadows program at #ASPAB in Wellington, #NewZealand!

#Cawthron #SeagrassRestoration #MarineScience

Pollen transport to deep-marine environments: Considerations for reconstructing past vegetation from marine sediment cores Deep-marine sedimentary records provide a unique opportunity to investigate long-term vegetation changes in response to climate through pollen analysi…

New marine pollen records by my student Laura McDonald (who just handed in her PHD), from offshore NZ that test the potential bias in the pollen assemblage due to distance and sediment transport mechanisms from the land to the ocean. 🌊 🌲 🌸 the results are surprising - there is not much difference.

Natural forests of the world – a 2020 baseline for deforestation and degradation monitoring - Scientific Data Scientific Data - Natural forests of the world – a 2020 baseline for deforestation and degradation monitoring

We can map the world's existing forests with incredible accuracy now, but clearly we cannot (or will not) stop them from disappearing at rapid rates almost everywhere. www.nature.com/articles/s41... 🌎

On behalf of the Department of Oceanography at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, we are excited to invite applications for a full-time, tenure-track faculty position in Ocean Biogeochemical Modeling at the rank of assistant professor. www.schooljobs.com/careers/hawa... position number 0082726