The Hindu : Looming threat to aquatic meadows

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 04, 2004

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Looming threat to aquatic meadows

By Aarti Dhar

NEW DELHI JAN. 3. Fifteen per cent of the seagrasses in the marine ecosystem have been destroyed in the past 10 years, posing a serious threat to the aquatic herbivores.

According to the World Atlas of Seagrasses, brought out by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Conservation Monitoring Centre (WCMC), there is an urgent need to protect and conserve these important habitats threatened by increasing quantity of run-off nutrients and sediments from human activities on land, boating, land reclamation and construction on the coast, besides dredging and destructive fishing practices.

Seagrasses are unique as they are the only marine flowering plants. These are a mixed group of flowering plants — not seaweeds — that flourish in some of the shallow waters that line the Indian coast. The atlas has identified 60 species of underwater flowering plants. Thousands of associated marine plants and animals utilise the seagrass as habitat, which varies from strap-like blades of the eelgrass in the Sea of Japan (4-metre long) to the tiny rounded leaves of sea vine (2-3 cm) in the deep tropical waters of Brazil.

Although there are extensive seagrass beds on all the continents except Antarctica, seagrasses have declined or been totally destroyed at many places. Vast underwater meadows of seagrass skirt the coasts of Africa, Alaska, southern Europe, East Africa and the Caribbean islands. In India, these are found along the Gulf of Mannar and the coasts of Lakshdweep and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

The meadows provide habitat for fish and shellfish and serve as nursery areas to the larger ocean and perform the important physical function of filtering coastal waters, dissipating wave energy and anchoring sediments to prevent erosion. Seagrasses are primary food for manatees, dugongs and the green sea turtle.

This is the first-ever global survey of underwater meadows that skirt the world's coasts according to which 1,77,000 sq. km., an area one-thirds of the size of the United Kingdom, is covered by marine grasses. The atlas is a collaboration of more than 50 authors from 25 nations. The purpose of bringing out the atlas is to present a global synthesis of the distribution and status of seagrasses.

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