Do you know how important seagrass beds are?

What are seagrass beds? Seagrass beds are not true grass beds but they are flowing plants that are underwater their entire life. They need sunlight to convert carbon dioxide into food and energy.

Seagrass beds are made up of turtle grass, manatee grass, and shoal grass. Turtle grass has strap-like blades with parallel veins and it almost looks like the grass you have in your front lawn, and believe it or not only the green sea turtles eat turtle grass the other sea turtles either don't have the mouth for it or they don't like it. Manatee grass is unique because it has cylinder shape leaves, and guess what manatee's eat manatee grass. They also eat turtle grass and Shoal grass which is part of their diet. Shoal grass is less than 3 mm in width and is strap-like leaf blades making it almost look like manatee grass, but manatee grass it harder and has a cylinder feeling as the shoal grass is flat. Shoal grass is also a very important seagrass because it grows where turtle grass and manatee grass cannot.

Seagrass beds are important because they provide shelter for marine fish and invertebrate, food for large marine mammals and the small fish and invertebrates that live within the seagrass beds. They also provide protection from other predators during the day for some fish. Another reason they are important is because they provide a nursery for some fish species and invertebrates that eventually move to the coral reef as they mature into adults. The seagrass beds also help with the wave action. If there is a big current with a lot of wave action the seagrass beds help to slow it down from doing a lot of damage to the shore.

Believe it or not seagrass beds were once used to fertilize fields, insulate houses, weave furniture, make bandage and they were even used for car seats. There are threats to the seagrass beds as well like, algae blooms that block the sunlight that hits the seagrass bed making them die off or get some type of disease. Also, removal of fish can also damage the seagrass beds because when large predators are removed intermediate predator overcome the seagrass beds and take out the smaller organisms that help keep the seagrass cleaned.

If you would like to learn more about seagrass beds please read this article.

Seagrass beds in Florida.