van Katwijk Marieke M, van Tussenbroek Brigitta I, Hanssen Steef V, Hendriks A Jan, Hanssen Lucien
Department of Environmental Science, Institute for Water and Wetland Research, Radboud University, Nijmegen, The Netherlands.
Reef Systems Unit, Instituto de Ciencias del Mar y Limnología, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, Mexico.
Bioscience. 2021 Sep 22;71(11):1171-1178. doi: 10.1093/biosci/biab092. eCollection 2021 Nov.
It is well known that seagrass meadows sequester atmospheric carbon dioxide, protect coasts, provide nurseries for global fisheries, and enhance biodiversity. Large-scale restoration of lost seagrass meadows is urgently needed to revive these planetary ecosystem services, but sourcing donor material from natural meadows would further decline them. Therefore, we advocate the domestication and mariculture of seagrasses in order to produce the large quantities of seed needed for successful rewilding of the sea with seagrass meadows. We provide a roadmap for our proposed solution and show that 44% of seagrass species have promising reproductive traits for domestication and rewilding by seeds. The principle of partially domesticating species to enable subsequent large-scale rewilding may form a successful shortcut to restore threatened keystone species and their vital ecosystem services.
众所周知，海草草甸能吸收大气中的二氧化碳，保护海岸，为全球渔业提供育苗场，并增强生物多样性。迫切需要对丧失的海草草甸进行大规模恢复，以恢复这些地球生态系统服务，但从天然草甸获取供体材料会使其进一步减少。因此，我们主张对海草进行驯化和海水养殖，以便生产出海草草甸成功进行海洋再野生化所需的大量种子。我们为我们提出的解决方案提供了一个路线图，并表明44%的海草物种具有通过种子进行驯化和再野生化的良好繁殖特性。部分驯化物种以实现后续大规模再野生化的原则，可能成为恢复受威胁的关键物种及其重要生态系统服务的成功捷径。
