Harvesting 'hope' for next generation

BRITISH inventors are on a mission to save the country’s dwindling seagrass meadows with the help of an “underwater lawnmower”.

- BY STEPH SPYRO Environment Editor

Edwin Towler, 28, and Sam Rogers, 30, created the seed harvester to restore the flowering plants which have all but disappeared because of pollution, physical damage from boating, coastal development and climate change.

The device cuts and collects seagrass seed pods, which the charity Project Seagrass then uses to restore the underwater meadows.

The marine plants provide food and shelter for thousands of species but have been declining globally since the 1930s.

In the past century, 92% of the plants have been lost from Britain’s coasts and areas once covered by seagrass are now lifeless seabeds.

Ed and Sam, the co-founders of Tandem Ventures, made a bright yellow craft which glides along the seabed to harvest the seeds.

Traditional collection is a time-consuming manual process, with divers using scissors to cut and collect the seeds one-by-one, before placing them in a bag.

The new harvester can accelerate the collection by 100 times, to allow for large-scale meadow replanting and restoration.