A Central Queensland project is focused on restoring seagrasses and challenging the concept that seagrass restoration is impractical in Queensland.

Loss of seagrasses affects many animals including fish, turtles, dugongs and crab populations, which are important for our coastal ecosystems and recreational values. Seagrasses are also an important carbon sink in the marine environment.

Professor Marnie Campbell

The 'Restoring Queensland's seagrass meadows' project is being led by Professor Marnie Campbell of CQUniversity, with help from $360,000 in competitive funding from the Queensland Government.

"This research will be an important test for the viability of restoring seagrasses in this region," Prof Campbell says.

"Because of our location the research will focus on Gladstone, and potentially Bundaberg and Mackay, depending on funding.

"Flood events and industrialisation are reducing seagrass coverage and physically removing seagrasses and we'll be developing new ways of restoring seagrasses to counteract these losses.  A number of experiments will occur, both in specially designed indoor and outdoor aquarium systems and in the field."

Prof Campbell said the project is examining characteristics of seagrass seed banks, preferred sediment types (to develop mechanisms to vegetate dredge spoil), and different species' responses to burial, water temperatures and shading.  She said the project will assess growth rates to indicate the best types of plants for meadow restoration.

"We're aiming to have an accurate model for the best species, the best location and best types of plants to use when restoring seagrasses. Field testing will then be used to test the accuracy of the model and we'll undertake a full-scale restoration effort to fully test the models created," she said.

Prof Campbell said Queensland is among regions of the world losing a lot of seagrass at a great rate every year.

"Restoration of seagrass is an issue that scientists have grappled with for the last 60 years and had little success, not because it can't be done, but because we've not always approached the problem in a scientific way," she says.

"My research is developing innovative and new methods of restoring seagrasses. To succeed with this we need good, solid science that uses local information and we have to be willing to give seagrass restoration a go in Queensland.

"The research is tailored to the local seagrass species responses to local stressors and developing restoration techniques that consider those stress responses, instead of applying information from other species and locations.

"A number of the seagrass in this region have not been examined before, because research efforts have focused on the dominant species only. Hence, this research will fill some important research and data gaps in the seagrass literature and knowledge bases."

Prof Campbell has also received a CQUniversity RAAS award* of $300,000 to bring Postdoctoral Fellow Dr Emma Jackson into the project, from January 2013. Dr Jackson comes from the University of Plymouth, UK, and the UK Marine Biological Association.

* RAAS is a Research Advancement Award Scheme (Postdoctoral Research Award).