Plant hectares of seagrass meadow

2025 has been another cracking year for our seagrass restoration project. After four years of trialing different restoration methodologies, with mixed success, we now have conclusive proof that the translocation of seagrass shoots can lead to the rapid growth of seagrass meadows.

Seagrass is the ocean’s only flowering plant and plays a vital role in supportingmarine biodiversity as well as being an important carbon sink, yet it has been disappearing at an alarming rate since the 1900s. Efforts to restore seagrass are dogged by failure, but Seawilding’s new methodology is showing unprecedented success.

For the last 10 years, efforts around the UK have focused on restoring seagrass habitat mainly by sowing seagrass seeds. Yet success has been limited, with few examples of widespread seagrass habitat becoming established. Since 2024, Seawilding has been trialing a new approach, transplanting tens of thousands of adult shoots from existing seagrass “donor” meadows to remarkable effect.

Since July 2024, a newly planted area saw an increase in seabed coverage from 10% to more than 70% in just 15 months, while in 2025 a new trial achieved 97% survival of transplanted seagrass shoots and an average four-fold increase in seabed coverage in just 6 months. Altogether this has resulted in an area of 0.3 hectares of newly created seagrass habitat. Crucially, the impact of shoot extraction from the existing donor meadow is negligible. Even when harvested at 25% across a trial plot, in just 5 months shoot density was back to near-natural levels.

Two of our trial sites, one in Loch Beag and one within the sand-cap trial area, sadly didn’t establish successfully. While this wasn’t the outcome we had hoped for, setbacks like these are an important part of the restoration journey. We now have a better idea of why these sites failed (explained in more detail below), and each trial has provided valuable lessons to take forward. We’ll continue to test new areas and refine our techniques, learning as we go, and, we hope, building towards long-term success along the way.

As you will read in this annual report, the ground-breaking results are a first for seagrass restoration in the UK, and on the back of this success, in 2026, Seawilding will expand beyond Loch Craignish to trial seagrass restoration at other sites on the West coast of Scotland.

Once again in 2025, we were joined by scores of volunteers, academics and interested parties keen to see practical seagrass restoration at work, and the award of a “Gold” for our collaborative seagrass garden at the Royal Horticultural Society’s Chelsea Flower Show helped amplify our work and our key message that marine habitat protection and restoration is critical to restoring ocean health. You can read more about the show and the award in our Outreach Report 2025.

We hope you find this account of our seagrass restoration in 2025 informative and fulfilling - please read the attached for the full report.

Links:

• https://www.seawilding.org/seawilding-reports

• Seagrass Annual Report 2025 (PDF)
  

Seawilding, Scotland’s first community-based marine habitat restoration charity has achieved a major breakthrough in seagrass (Zostera marina) restoration.

 Using an innovative technique that translocates seagrass shoots instead of planting seeds, the project has achieved a remarkable increase in seabed coverage - from 10% to 70% in just 15 months - with an impressive 97% survival rate.

Seagrass is the ocean’s only flowering plant and provides a vital habitat for marine biodiversity as well as being an important carbon sink, yet it has been disappearing at an alarming rate since the 1900s. Efforts to restore seagrass are dogged by failure, but Seawilding’s new methodology is showing unprecedented success.

 For the last 10 years, efforts around the UK have focused on restoring seagrass habitat mainly by sowing seagrass seed. Yet success has been limited, with few examples of widespread seagrass habitat becoming established.

 Since 2024, Seawilding has been trialling a new approach, transplanting tens of thousands of adult shoots from existing seagrass “donor” meadows to remarkable effect. Since July 2024, a newly planted area saw an increase in seabed coverage from 10% to more than 70% in just 15 months, while in 2025 a new trial achieved 97% survival of transplanted seagrass shoots and an average four-fold increase in seabed coverage in just 6 months.

Altogether this has resulted in an area of 0.3 hectares of newly created seagrass habitat. Crucially, the impact of shoot extraction from the existing ‘donor’ meadow appears negligible. Even when harvested at 25% across an area, in just 5 months shoot density was back to near-natural levels.

For seagrass restoration in the UK, these trials represent a significant leap forward in technical success, and likely one of the most successful establishments of seagrass habitat in the UK to date. Full details of our results will be shared in our annual report later this year.

It’s an exciting break-through” says Will Goudy, Seawilding’s Seagrass Lead. “We’ve trialled multiple methods over the last 5 years, and had our fair share of failure, but with this methodology we’re proving it’s possible to restore seagrass at scale.”

The next step for Seawilding is to keep building on this success by refining the harvesting and planting efficiency and trialling this successful method in new locations, all while continuing to support the recovery and restoration of our seas.

• Seawilding_breakthrough_for_Seagrass_Restoration_November_2025.pdf (PDF)