Celebrating a hidden marine superhero: Wilder Humber’s Festival of Seagrass returns to The Deep this Autumn

The Deep are pleased to host the third year of the Super Seagrass Festival alongside the Wilder Humber team. A pioneering partnership between Ørsted and Yorkshire & Lincolnshire Wildlife Trusts, Wilder Humber’s ambitious 5-year plan involves returning 40 hectares of lost biodiversity to the Humber estuary. It trials a seascape scale model, combining sand dune, saltmarsh, seagrass, and native oyster restoration to maximise conservation and biodiversity benefits. This event spotlights the incredible conservation work that Wilder Humber is carrying out, alongside showcasing the importance of seagrass as a vital habitat for many marine species.

This year’s event will be held across the weekend of the 12th and 13th October 2024, and will see members of the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust team at The Deep encouraging visitors to make up hessian seed bags to be planted at Spurn Point. This unique event offers visitors an exciting opportunity to contribute to real life important conservation action that is happening on their doorstep. Last year’s festival saw 2,000 seed bags created over the course of the weekend; it is hoped that The Deep’s visitors will beat that target this year!

Alongside seagrass seed bag making, at 11am, 1pm and 3pm, Guides from The Deep will be running Super Seagrass interactive workshops for visitors to learn more about how seagrass meadows positively impact the marine environment and how the plant stores carbon, helping to tackle climate change.

The Humber estuary once supported vast seagrass meadows across both banks, with records of dwarf seagrass covering over 500 hectares at Spurn Point, and vast swathes from Grimsby to Cleethorpes. Due to industrialisation of the estuary, and subsequent decline in water quality, disease and coastal squeeze, the expansive seagrass beds deteriorated almost completely, between the 1930s and 1980s.

Seagrass is the world’s only flowering plant capable of living in seawater and, globally, captures carbon up to 35 times faster than tropical rainforests, accounting for 10-18% of total ocean carbon storage despite covering less than 0.1% of the seafloor. Seagrass can also help protect our coast from damaging storms and erosion through dampening the force of waves and is very effective at removing pollutants from our waters. In the UK, seagrass meadows are a vital habitat for marine life. They support biodiversity by providing essential nursery habitat for important fish species, such as bass and sand eel, and bird species such as Brent geese. 

Andy van der Schatte Olivier, Marine Programme Manager at Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, said:

“We've already observed a rise in species making use of the Wilder Humber seagrass meadows at Spurn, including the critically endangered European eel. However, involving the local community in seagrass restoration efforts is essential for safeguarding this vital habitat in the years ahead. By collaborating to assemble seed bags, we can all play a hands-on role in restoring this crucial marine species and leave a meaningful legacy in the Humber. That's why we'd love to see as many people as possible join us at this year’s Seagrass Festival!"

Katy Duke, Chief Executive Officer at The Deep, said:

“We are pleased to once again host this year’s Super Seagrass Festival in collaboration with Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. This event provides a unique opportunity to contribute to Wilder Humber’s important local conservation and restoration project. We look forward to engaging and inspiring our visitors to discover why seagrass is such a vital marine habitat, which needs our help to protect it.”