Seawilding
Seawilding, based at Loch Craignish, Argyll, is the UK’s first community-led native oyster and seagrass restoration project. Their aim is to restore lost biodiversity, sequester carbon, and to create green jobs. They are pioneering low-cost, best-practice marine habitat restoration methodologies and empowering other coastal communities to do the same.
The waters around the UK once offered a haven of biodiverse marine habitats, but it is estimated that as much as 92% of seagrass have been lost from our coasts, along with 95% of our native oysters. Extensive surveys in the Loch suggest there’s around 80 hectares of seabed ripe for restoration. Seawilding aims to restore these 80 hectares to their former glory and reintroduce up to one million native oysters to the coastline of Argyll.
Through meticulous scientific research and community engagement, Seawilding has successfully brought these once threatened ecosystems back to life, allowing marine life to thrive once again.
Our Partnership
- £60,000 raised for Seawilding in 2023. This funding will cover a significant portion of their operational costs, enabling their team to further research, develop, and expand their native oyster and seagrass restoration projects.
- To date, Seawilding have successfully replanted a hectare of seagrass and have restored 350,000 native oysters on the sea bed.
- Seagrass is an essential component of ocean biodiversity as it provides a thriving habitat for marine wildlife and is able to sequester carbon at up to 35 times the rate of rainforests.
- In addition, unlike rainforests, seagrass has the ability to reproduce from just 18 months old, meaning once a single seed is planted, within this short period of time we can begin to see fascinating growth of meadows, on their way to becoming an interconnected ecosystem.
- £85,000 raised for Seawilding to date.
