Underwater Magic: Eelgrass Meadows
On a fine spring day when every muscle cries for vigorous movement after months of armchair indulgence, Saanich Inlet is a good local destination within comfortable bicycling or paddling distance. If your mood happens to be rambunctious rather than meditative, you’ll love Patricia Bay, with its wide skies, scudding clouds and overhead clamour of gulls squabbling over shellfish harvested from tidal pools and barnacle-studded rocks. Like sympathetic magic -- where like cures like -- the gulls’ clamour mingled with the shrill excitement of children stills the cacophony of work-week thoughts rumbling in their well-travelled ruts. A brisk trot up and down the shore trail, and you'll be ready to join the little ones wading in the shallows, fine sand and gentle ripples caressing boot-weary feet.
Tucked away a couple of kilometres south, the much smaller Coles Bay offers a welcome haven of quietude in the late afternoon when everyone has had their fill of jumping and running. In the pleasant afterglow that follows physical exertion the body enjoys a change of pace and the senses open to more subtle noticing. Through a mixed woodland, the trail winds along a trickling creek. The soft gurgle of lapping surf falls gently on the ear as you explore the beach warmed by the westering sun. The cove is quiet and secluded yet full of life: Bufflehead and Goldeneye ducks diving after their dinner, a pair of Double-Crested Cormorants drying their wings on a pier; all of them upstaged by a soaring Bald Eagle, to be admired and followed with binoculars until it becomes a speck in the sky.
Although Pat Bay and Coles Bay look and feel very different when observed from dry land, once you begin to explore the intertidal zone many similarities emerge. Wading in at low tide, you can easily reach the edge of lush eelgrass meadows that extend along the whole eastern shore of Saanich Inlet. In a canoe or kayak, you can paddle even further where intertidal eelgrass (Zostera japonica) gives way to the native species (Zostera marina) which grows taller and prefers deeper water. Eelgrass beds have long been treasured as cradles of marine abundance: nurseries for fish and invertebrates, feeding grounds for marine birds and mammals and habitat for shellfish.
As if this wasn’t enough, a few months ago two UN studies demonstrated that eelgrass beds have a tremendous potential to moderate global warming. Like forests, they store immense amounts of carbon but much more efficiently - up to ninety times the rate of uptake provided by the equivalent area of forest. In BC, eelgrass beds and salt marshes together take up as much carbon as the entire boreal forest. Unfortunately, they are also among the most rapidly disappearing ecosystems on earth, having lost at least 30% of their area since 1940 and under increasing threat today.
This dismembering of vital ecosystems is increasingly being countered by residents up and down the coast who have banded together to map and restore eelgrass beds. “When people have the opportunity to work together as neighbours mapping their local eelgrass beds, and they see this information becoming part of a bigger picture, they develop a stronger sense of place. This work lends itself to a stewardship ethic that carries over into the rest of their lives,” says Nikki Wright, Co-Chair of the Seagrass Conservation Working Group, a BC organization that works on near-shore mapping and restoration in partnership with stewardships groups, First Nations and government agencies. Some groups, in response to the needs in their community to make wiser planning decisions, gather more information about the life on the intertidal and backshore areas. Mapping around the Salish Sea now includes spawning areas for sandlance and surf smelt (an important food source for larger fish and seabirds), marine riparian areas and sensitive habitats, such as bird nesting areas.
While the Seagrass Conservation Working Group does this vital work at the grassroots level, supporting citizens’ groups in developing their “gumboot power”, Sierra Club BC works at the provincial level to educate decision-makers about the importance of conservation, management and restoration of these rich carbon-soaking meadows.
