Seagrass | Practice: Saving an ecosystem most people have never heard of

In this episode of Big Ideas Only, Mikkel Svold reconnects with Dr. Benjamin Jones, Chief Conservation Officer and co-founder of Project Seagrass, to explore what happens when seagrass theory meets real-world conservation.

Moving beyond the science of carbon capture and marine ecology, this conversation digs into the practical challenges of protecting an ecosystem that most people have never thought about. Benjamin shares stories from fishing communities in Indonesia and Florida, explains why government departments struggle to coordinate land and sea management, and describes how citizen science and political engagement have become surprisingly effective tools. The discussion reveals that saving seagrass often has little to do with planting seagrass — and everything to do with what happens on shore.

In this episode, you'll learn about:

• Why 13.5 million people living below the poverty line depend directly on seagrass for their daily food
• How seagrass meadows store carbon for up to 200,000 years — and release it rapidly when destroyed
• The governance gap between marine and terrestrial management that makes coastal protection so difficult
• Why restoring seagrass sometimes means planting fruit trees along riverbanks instead
• How Wales created the world's first National Seagrass Action Plan through cross-party dialogue
• What everyday actions (diet, driving, citizen science) actually connect to seagrass health

Episode Content
00:54 Project Seagrass milestones: from undergraduate idea to global organization
02:28 Why seagrass was called the "ugly duckling" of marine conservation
04:36 Bajo communities in Indonesia: fishing families who live on seagrass meadows
06:58 Local knowledge: how coastal communities track seagrass changes over generations
11:34 The indirect dependencies most people don't realize (cod, pollock, Mediterranean fisheries)
15:04 Carbon time bomb: the 200,000-year-old seagrass meadow in Ibiza 
16:18 Restoration approaches: why you can't just plant seagrass everywhere
17:48 Fruit trees as seagrass conservation: solving sedimentation through riparian planting
20:32 The governance problem: marine and terrestrial agencies that don't talk to each other
23:02 Citizen science and the Seagrass Spotter app
31:19 Political progress: Wales' National Seagrass Action Plan
33:17 Why nature will recover faster than humans can replant — if given the right conditions 

This podcast is produced by Montanus.