In Baltic Sea, citizen divers restore seagrass to fight climate change

The sun lights up a seagrass meadow close to the beach of Falckenstein, near Kiel, Germany, July 10, 2023. Europe alone lost one third of its seagrass areas between the 1860s and 2016, one 2019 study found, releasing carbon into the atmosphere and speeding up global warming. While there are other initiatives to restore the plants worldwide, the SeaStore Seagrass Restoration Project in Kiel, run by the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research is one of the first that aims to enable citizens to do so autonomously. REUTERS/Lisi Niesner

KIEL, Germany (Reuters) - Just off the coast of Kiel in northern Germany, scuba divers use hand trowels to dig up emerald green seagrass shoots complete with roots from a dense underwater meadow, delicately shaking off the sediment before placing them in yellow bags.

Back on land, they store the shoots in large cooling boxes, before heading out the next day to a barren area further north to replant them in circles. One diver holds a line, and the other uses it to navigate the murky waters and swim around him.