Eelgrass Restoration Project Gets Grant

A project to restore a historic eelgrass bed in a section of Anacapa Island known as Frenchy’s Cove has won about $32,000 in federal funding, officials announced Friday.

The grant is one of five in the state given each year by a community-based restoration program of the National Marine Fisheries Service.

Santa Barbara-based ChannelKeeper, an environmental activist group, will lead the project, recruiting and training volunteer divers to plant new eelgrass.

Eelgrass grows in beds and in shallow bays and lagoons, supporting complex food webs, filtering nutrients and stabilizing sediments in the water. In California, eelgrass beds help feed commercial fish such as giant kelp fish, rockfish and kelp bass, but have declined as a result of development and pollution.

Though the habitat on Anacapa is relatively untouched by pollution, the eelgrass was devoured by sea urchins after the El Nino-generated storms of 1983 inflated the creatures’ population. Despite sea urchins returning to normal numbers since then, the eelgrass has failed to grow back.

The project will test two methods of restoration. In one, plants grown elsewhere would be transplanted to the site. In the other, seeds collected from other eelgrass beds would be planted in the bed at Frenchy’s Cove.

ChannelKeeper researchers are beginning the planting and monitoring effort, which will take two years, federal officials said.

The environmental group is conducting the restoration project in cooperation with the Channel Islands Research Program and eelgrass experts from several universities.