Vast meadows of eelgrass once covered the muddy bottoms of Virginia\u2019s coastal lagoons. Fishermen plucked bay scallops by the thousands from these underwater prairies, and companies chopped down the long ribbonlike stalks to make home insulation and men\u2019s hats. Then, in the early 1930s, a slime mold disease, followed by a hurricane, killed off nearly every last blade.<\/p>\n
Now, almost 90 years later, scientists say they have successfully restored more than 3,600 hectares of eelgrass in Virginia\u2019s lagoons. \u201cVery few people can say they\u2019ve seen an eelgrass area come back the way we\u2019ve seen here,\u201d says the project\u2019s leader, Robert \u201cJJ\u201d Orth, a marine ecologist with William & Mary\u2019s Virginia Institute of Marine Science. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing else like this in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n
Thirty years after the slime mold attack, eelgrass did return to many areas along the Eastern Seaboard\u2014but Virginia\u2019s lagoons remained barren of the plant. For decades, scientists thought poor water quality was to blame. But, in 1997, a local resident told Orth about a remnant eelgrass patch in Virginia\u2019s South Bay. Surprised and thrilled at the discovery, Orth and his team soon realized the problem wasn\u2019t related to water quality but to seed dispersal.<\/p>\n
Normally, eelgrass\u2019s flowering shoots break off and are carried by the current into new areas. But the shoots were rarely making it into the lagoons. \u201cBecause the bays are so isolated, with very narrow openings to the ocean, they simply couldn\u2019t get there,\u201d says Jonathan Lefcheck, a marine ecologist at Maryland\u2019s Smithsonian Environmental Research Center who joined the project in 2015.<\/p>\n
So in 2001, the scientists began harvesting shoots from the South Bay patch\u2014first by hand, and then by using a lawn mower\u2013like blade they attached to the front of a boat. Once they separated the seeds from the plants, they tossed handfuls into South Bay and other nearby lagoons. In time, the eelgrass beds became self-sustaining. \u201cWe just kind of gave nature a push,\u201d says Orth.<\/p>\n