How well equipped is Australia to reverse the trend of declining seagrass habitat through restoration?

“Seagrass beds are an important coastal habitat providing many ecosystem services” is a sentence that has adorned the first line of manuscripts regarding these habitats for decades. Their ability to influence ecosystem... [ view full abstract ]

“Seagrass beds are an important coastal habitat providing many ecosystem services” is a sentence that has adorned the first line of manuscripts regarding these habitats for decades. Their ability to influence ecosystem functioning and the delivery of ecosystem services is widely evidenced. However, in a group statement issued by the IUCN Seagrass Species Specialist Group in November 2014, seagrasses were identified as one of the most rapidly declining ecosystems on Earth. In Australia seagrasses previously able to recover naturally have been pushed to the point where intervention is required and this is occurring against a backdrop of rapid industrialisation, catchment inputs and climate variability. This presentation examines over 40 years of seagrass restoration and creation history in Australia, identifying what drives seagrass restoration, summarising lessons learnt, addressing issues still faced and discussing research gaps. With an aim to promoting discussion within the restoration session, the review highlights the current geographical imbalance of seagrass restoration science, problems with policy drivers, new tools and techniques and how the motivation for restoration does and should influence the approach taken. Tropical seagrass restoration science currently lags behind temperate research. Recent efforts to build the science base for tropical seagrass restoration are presented using Port Curtis and Rodd’s bay (Central Queensland) as a case study.