Above:
seagrass and mangroves combine to form a blue carbon
ecosystem that not only mitigates
against some of the worst aspects of climate
and individuals an effective way to offset their carbon footprint on a voluntary basis.
To compensate for the carbon generated by the Vestas 11th Hour Racing sailing team during The Ocean Race 2017-18, 11th Hour Racing has been collaborating with The Ocean Foundation on blue carbon projects in Puerto Rico. They used The Ocean Foundation’s Seagrass Grow Calculator to convert the team’s carbon footprint to an approximate dollar value. ‘We have retrospectively increased our investments to include onsite training for the local community to fund the education programme around blue carbon certification. This is important to us as we have a net positive approach for our team, a determination to leave a restorative impact in our wake, both environmentally and socially,’ says Damian Foxall, sustainability manager, 11th Hour Racing Team. In the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, The Ocean Foundation and its local partner Conservación
change, such as flooding and erosion, but also helps to combat the root causes. People and organisations can invest in blue carbon restoration projects to voluntarily offset their own carbon footprints. Left: shallow seagrass meadows like this are very vulnera- ble to damage by outboard motors – after which they may take decades to recover
Conciencia identified Jobos Bay on the south coast of Puerto Rico as a suitable site for seagrass restoration. Crucially, all of the necessary infrastructure was already in place to make the project viable. The western part of the bay is managed by the Jobos Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, with staff who were keen to restore their seagrass meadows but lacked the additional resources to do so. One of the Foundation’s go-to seagrass restoration experts, Manuel Merello, had restored a patch of seagrass in Jobos Bay 10 years prior, so proof of concept was already established. ‘All the pieces were in place,’ says Ben Scheelk, The Ocean Foundation’s programme officer leading the Blue Carbon initiative. ‘And that’s essential. To work on public land, you need a permit from the US Army Corps of Engineers and they won’t issue a permit unless the people doing the work are credible.’ Restoration work started in 2018 and the simple, low-cost method of seed dispersal was swiftly ruled out. Thalassia seeds have a very low germination rate and it just wouldn’t work in such a large area. ‘Given the scale, we needed a more labour- intensive but efficient approach called modified compressed succession,’ Scheelk explains. ‘To repair a hole or scar, first we bring in biodegradable sediment bags – sometimes hundreds of them – and stack them in the hole to re-grade the surface. The real issue is to get the edges repaired. If they’re too steep, the seagrass can’t grow.
‘Then we take fast-growing pioneer species like shoal grass or manatee grass from a donor bed, wrap them around a metal stake and put these planting units in the sediment bags. They quickly spread, stabilise the sediment and prevent further erosion. This creates the right conditions to allow the climax species, Thalassia, to overtake them in time. We’re speeding up what nature would do over many decades, compressing that into five to ten years.’ Bird stakes – PVC pipes with wooden perches on top – are then placed in the seagrass to provide a natural source of fertiliser. After a successful pilot, the next phase added five acres of seagrass and an acre of mangroves to the restoration plan. A series of workshops trained locals in repair and planting work. People from other parts of Puerto Rico came to learn and took the skills back to their own restoration projects. Hundreds of mangrove seedlings were raised in greenhouses at the University of Puerto Rico. The project’s success attracted more funders and a
massive expansion is now planned, restoring 500 acres of badly degraded habitat in the eastern part of Jobos Bay, with the added challenge of hydrological works to restore the natural flow of water that has been altered by a road and canals serving two power stations. Building on the success at Jobos Bay, 11th Hour Racing is now helping The Ocean Foundation to start another restoration project in the famous Bioluminescent Bay – the brightest in the world – on the Puerto Rican island of Vieques. Again they’re working with a local organisation, Vieques Conservation & Historical Trust. Outside help is needed as the community has such limited resources that four years after the hurricanes, they are still struggling to rebuild their island’s only hospital. ‘The bay took quite a beating from the hurricanes in 2017,’ Scheelk says. ‘There was a lot of destruction at the mouth of the bay and it’s eroding away. The concern is that if it widens, the nutrient balance will be thrown off and the dinoflagellate plankton that causes the
bioluminescence will get flushed out into the ocean. That would devastate the island’s economy as all the ecotourism is based around that bay.’ After securing the mouth of the bay with two acres of mangroves, and some seagrass if a permit is granted, the plan is to restore the mangroves all around the bay, about 50 acres in total. ‘11th Hour Racing provided vital funding at the very beginning and we leveraged that money to make the project happen, which is how we got to where we are today,’ Scheelk says. ‘And now they’re helping us in Vieques. It’s been a remarkable relationship.’
The snag with blue carbon projects, he explains, is that while the potential benefits are enormous it takes a very long time to get a project certified, which must happen before funders can receive tradable carbon credits in return for donations: ‘You won’t know how much carbon has been offset until long after the work has finished.’ Carbon sampling can’t be done for a decade after planting and full benefit may take a century. But a restored seagrass meadow can thrive for thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years. ‘Mangroves are a bit different but both species are very long-lived,’ he explains. ‘They can effectively store carbon forever.’ To calculate and offset your own personal or organisational carbon footprint by investing in blue carbon habitat restoration work, go to
Oceanfdn.org/calculator and join The Ocean Foundation’s Seagrass Grow programme.
11thhourracing.org
q SEAHORSE 77
BEN SCHEELK/THE OCEAN FOUNDATION
HOLLY FISHER/
SPENCE-CREATIVE.COM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106
