Saving our seagrass forests
Despite it being July, a steely Irish Sea grips me as I take a breath before a second dive. Here in Porthdinllaen, both sea and sky are anthracite. Moody, like the slate inland away from this bay on Wales’s spectacular Llyn Peninsula – ‘Snowdon’s arm’, as it’s known locally. But as I submerge, greys flush into yellows, greens and teals. Light persists in ways I haven’t noticed before. A flick of my fins propels me onwards over a meadow of grass that sways below, like a field of wheat.
Buoyant in both wetsuit and mood, I am seeing a habitat that is new for me, but a precious antique of our planet. A habitat hailed as both conservation’s ‘wonder plant’ and its ‘ugly duckling’ in the same breath. It’s a habitat that lingers on the edge of survival in the UK, and the world.
