Since the summer of this year, biology major Lucy Dutton ’25 has been working with the Schiller Coastal Studies Center as part of a regional collaboration to restore Casco Bay’s degraded eelgrass habitat.
“An underwater flowering plant with long green leaves, eelgrass is the foundation of the marine food web,” says radio journalist Molly Enking in a recent report that aired on .
“Eelgrass provides shelter and a mating ground for juvenile fish and lobster,” she adds. It also improves water quality by absorbing nitrogen and sequesters a large amount of carbon.
Working out of ϳԹվ’s Schiller Coastal Studies Center on Orr’s Island, Dutton is part of initiative called , a group of volunteer scientists aiming to improve the health of these plants in this part of southern Maine’s coastal ecosystem. Key to that effort is the contribution by Dutton, who is pursuing a senior thesis in eelgrass germination and reproduction.
One morning, Dutton leads a group down to the wet lab at ϳԹվ’s Schiller Center, where volunteers spend several hours sorting through piles of underwater debris in search of eelgrass seeds.
They’re hoping to process thousands of seeds over the course of the morning, reports Enking. “Once processed, some of the seeds will stay in the lab over the winter to germinate and sprout. And others will be returned to the ocean floor,” we are told. This will involve, Enking’s report goes on to say, donning scuba gear and heading out into the bottom of Casco Bay to plant the seeds manually. .
The Schiller Coastal Studies Center and Team Zostera are also featured in a recent report on WMTW/Channel 8: .
