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Meet the team restoring critically important underwater forests | Discovery | Gardening Australia

Costa joins a dedicated team of researchers, scientists and volunteers working to restore Sydney’s critically important underwater forests. Subscribe 🔔 http://ab.co/GA-subscribe It’s hard to imagine that 70km of forest and meadow habitat adjacent to one of our biggest cities disappeared without anyone noticing. But, in the 1980s, this is exactly what happened between Palm Beach and Cronulla on Sydney’s Northern Beaches, and it took decades until people realised. The reason? This missing forest grew from the seafloor and shallow reefs of Sydney’s beaches and bays, and the dominant plant was Crayweed, a type of temperate seaweed. Professor Adriana Verges, a marine ecologist based at UNSW and the Sydney Institute of Marine Science, is leading the Operation Crayweed campaign, alongside Dr Ziggy Marzinelli and Derrick Cruz. They are committed to educating people on the importance of these underwater landscapes, and seaweed. “When beachgoers think of seaweed, it is often something that is seen as an annoyance. When gardeners think of seaweed, it is as a garden additive, but it is so much more than that,” she says. “They may not be glamorous, but they’re incredibly important. They provide critical food and habitat that supports hundreds of species. Just like trees on the land, seaweeds form vast underwater forests that underpin coastal food webs, all while capturing atmospheric carbon and producing oxygen. Temperate seaweed forests are in decline worldwide, due to human activities, and that is what we have seen here along Sydney’s beaches,” explains Adriana. “There are dense forests of Crayweed (Phyllospora comosa) - a beautiful, large golden-coloured seaweed - all the way from Port Macquarie to Tasmania. It was abundant along the Sydney coastline, but sometime during the 1980s, it disappeared completely from the metropolitan area. We believe that the high volumes of sewage that were pumped directly onto Sydney’s beaches and bays before the 1990s likely caused this decline.” And although the water quality in Sydney has improved dramatically since this time, the crayweed forests have not returned naturally. “This is the aim of Operation Crayweed - to bring crayweed back to reefs where it once flourished and to re-establish this essential habitat and food source for Sydney’s coastal marine biodiversity.” Crayweed plays an important role in the environment because it provides habitat for hundreds of species, including rock lobster (or crayfish, hence its name!), abalone and small critters known as epifauna. “The loss of large seaweeds like crayweed from temperate reefs is akin to losing corals from tropical reefs,” says Adriana. “When trees are cut down, people notice and become vocal, but the underwater reefs remain ‘out of sight, out of mind' to many,” she says. “There is a crucial connection between the underwater world and our terrestrial way of life - we depend upon healthy fisheries for food, thriving coastlines for protection as well as play, and underwater forests to draw down carbon amid accelerating global warming. This is why reforestation through Operation Crayweed is so vital.” But this is not a straightforward revegetation project. “It’s not as simple as sowing seeds and hoping for the best,” explains Adriana. “Essentially, we have to harvest fertile, adult crayweed from existing healthy populations and transplant them to these deforested areas.” This is not a process of ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’. “We harvest comparatively small amounts of mature crayweed from large, established forests, ensuring that we cause no damage or negative impact to these healthy, thriving populations.” They also collect widely, to ensure the new population is genetically diverse. Featured Plants: CRAYWEED - Phyllospora comosa Filmed on Garigal Country | Palm Beach and Freshwater, NSW ___________________________________________ Gardening Australia is an ABC TV program providing gardening know-how and inspiration. Presented by Australia's leading horticultural experts, Gardening Australia is a valuable resource to all gardeners through the television program, the magazine, books, DVDs and extensive online content. Watch more: http://iview.abc.net.au/programs/gard... Facebook:   / gardeningaustralia   Instagram:   / gardeningaustralia   Web: http://www.abc.net.au/gardening ___________________________________________ This is an official Australian Broadcasting Corporation YouTube channel. Contributions may be removed if they violate ABC's Online Conditions of Use http://www.abc.net.au/conditions.htm (Section 3).