Guest blog: Partner project for seagrass search

By the tranquil waters of Lee-on-Solent in Hampshire, CGI, NATS and Project Seagrass have completed an environmental, social and governance (ESG) activity as part of their relationship and delivery activities.

At CGI, we regularly complete collaborative activities with our partner businesses to support local communities and help with wider ESG engagement. For our latest ESG activity we invited one of our partners, Project Seagrass, to brief a team of volunteers from CGI and NATS, represented by the NATS analytics, supply chain, communications and safety and sustainability teams. This kind of activity is part of our contract with NATS,  who we’ve supported with their analytics function for over three years.

Project Seagrass specialises in marine conservation aimed at securing a future for seagrass. A representative from Project Seagrass explained how seagrass meadows are among the ocean’s most valuable but underappreciated ecosystems. Seagrass plants provide a myriad of ecological benefits, including serving as nurseries for commercially important fish species, storing carbon, producing oxygen and protecting shorelines from erosion. Despite their importance, seagrasses are facing threats from human activities and are declining at an alarming rate globally.

To assist with recording and monitoring seagrass levels, Project Seagrass developed the Seagrass Spotter; a free citizen science identification and logging tool. It allows users to discover and share any sightings of seagrass, enabling any discovered seagrass to be catalogued to aid Project Seagrass’s conservation work. With the Seagrass Spotter app installed, we headed off to survey the beach along the Solent to do our bit for marine conservation.

The Lee-on-Solent beach is a relatively sparse zone for seagrass occupation, although there are hopes that may change in the future. However, not wanting our efforts to be in vain, we completed a litter pick at the same time. The team collected over 20kg of rubbish and surveyed an 8km stretch of Lee-on-Solent beach, while collaborating and building relationships between the CGI and NATS teams. We also added one new sighting of seagrass, which has been registered on the Seagrass Spotter app.

Seagrass really is an unsung hero in the fight against climate change, so being able to identify and maintain seagrass areas could play a significant role for protecting the environment. In fact, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) say that seagrass captures carbon up to 35 times faster than tropical rainforests.

I would encourage everyone to take part in their own seagrass survey if you’re headed towards the coast. All sightings are valuable and play a crucial part in identifying, cataloguing and protecting this precious ecosystem.