Seagrasses support commercial fisheries and biodiversity, clean the surrounding water and help take carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. Because of these benefits, seagrasses are believed to be the third most valuable ecosystem in the world (only preceded by estuaries and wetlands).
Seagrasses are capable of capturing and storing a large amount of carbon from the atmosphere. Similar to how trees take carbon from the air to build their trunks, seagrasses take carbon from the water to build their leaves and roots.
One acre of seagrass can sequester 740 pounds of carbon per year (83g carbon per square meter per year), the same amount emitted by a car traveling around 3,860 miles (6,212 km).
Nanny Cay is one of the few developments in the BVI creating seagrass habitat. Nanny Cay’s two existing marinas create seagrass habitats of XX acres, the new marina will add an additional XX acres.
Seagrasses are known as the “lungs of the sea” because one square meter of seagrass can generate 10 litres of oxygen every day through photosynthesis.
NB. The seagrass at Nanny Cay be the invasive Halophilia stipulacea variety native to the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean.
“The Nanny Cay Coral Relocation Project Final Report (April 2017)” CMC noted the presence of the invasive fern seagrass, H. stipulacea, on the southern periphery of Nanny Cay. Further, it was noted that the horizontal growth rate was colonizing the barren spots in the sand channel at about 0.2 m2 per month.”
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.00300/full