WEBVTT Kind: captions Language: en 00:00:03.640 --> 00:00:10.280 Seagrasses once carpeted the seafloor of these coastal lagoons on the Eastern Shore 00:00:10.290 --> 00:00:14.100 and in late nineteen twenties early nineteen thirty's the seagrasses were 00:00:14.100 --> 00:00:19.189 affected by a pandemic disease. In 1933 a big storm hit the region and it 00:00:19.189 --> 00:00:24.619 completely decimated the seagrasses so they became locally extinct. Seagrass provide many 00:00:24.619 --> 00:00:29.399 important benefits to coastal ecosystems worldwide and the seagrass meadows, we've 00:00:29.399 --> 00:00:33.739 discovered over the last say five years, are really important in removing carbon 00:00:33.739 --> 00:00:38.220 dioxide from the atmosphere and being one of the possible solutions to global 00:00:38.220 --> 00:00:38.860 warming 00:00:38.860 --> 00:00:43.380 When I came here to UVA, the thought was that they couldn't live in this area because 00:00:43.380 --> 00:00:46.950 since they weren't there to stabilize the seafloor the settlement would stir 00:00:46.950 --> 00:00:50.950 up in the water column and block the light that they would need to grow. But 00:00:50.950 --> 00:00:54.400 we had a graduate student who did some work and found out that in fact there was 00:00:54.400 --> 00:00:58.640 enough light for the sea grass and that this area could possibly support them. We 00:00:58.640 --> 00:01:01.210 decided we wanted to partner with someone from the Virginia Institute of 00:01:01.210 --> 00:01:06.210 Marine Sciences and try to start seeding sea grass, and now almost 15 years later 00:01:06.210 --> 00:01:11.299 we have very expansive, thriving seagrass meadows. Our data provide the 00:01:11.299 --> 00:01:15.179 justification for restoring seagrass meadows globally. 00:01:20.260 --> 00:01:23.160 There are a lot of opportunities for students from University of Virginia to 00:01:23.170 --> 00:01:26.510 come here and be part of our research. -Working in the coastal zone is really 00:01:26.510 --> 00:01:30.310 important because it is where the majority of humans live, it's where the majority 00:01:30.310 --> 00:01:34.780 of cities are. -Every year we do this big annual synoptic survey where we go 00:01:34.780 --> 00:01:39.560 out with a team of 15 to 20 people and we measure everything we can measure out 00:01:39.560 --> 00:01:44.729 in the seagrass meadows. We monitor how seagrass is doing for years if 00:01:44.729 --> 00:01:49.550 you want to study how long-term global change will affect those coastal 00:01:49.550 --> 00:01:55.880 ecosystems you really have to get really long-term data sets. -The challenge is our seagrass systems 00:01:55.880 --> 00:02:01.680 are being lost quite dramatically, we've lost a quarter of the world seagrass meadows 00:02:01.680 --> 00:02:06.310 We know that seagrass meadows store twice the amount of carbon that a forrest 00:02:06.310 --> 00:02:11.720 would store. Part of the urgency is not losing seagrass meadows and also 00:02:11.720 --> 00:02:16.310 restoring seagrass meadows so that you have that ability to capture that carbon and 00:02:16.310 --> 00:02:19.870 store it and bury it for centuries to millennia.