Seagrass flowering season has just started for the year and thanks to the funding and support received from Ballistic Beer, CQUni’s Coastal Marine Ecosystems Research Centre (CMERC) is ready to make this our best year yet.

Over the next couple of months, we will be holding seagrass flower collection events in Gladstone (25^th September) and Burrum Heads (9^th October), using your sponsorship to support these activities ($300 per event for travel and information packs). This involves volunteers heading out on the seagrass flats with seagrass experts from CMERC learning about the different species of seagrass, how to find the flowers, and how to pick them without impacting the meadow. It’s a really great way for the general community to find out more about these incredible habitats, contribute to restoration research and on the ground restoration trials.

 The following photos are from last year’s events for illustration purposes.

The Ballistic Beer sponsorship will also be used to get the CMERC team down to Bundaberg for Oceanfest (27^th August) to highlight the seagrass restoration project and recruit volunteers for the flower picking event.

 Thanks to funding from Ballistic Beer, we are all ready to store the vast numbers of seeds we are set to collect this year. We have constructed four new seagrass seed storage tanks (see following picture). They look a bit like something you would find in a brewery! Each system costs around $350 but can safely store over 50,000 seeds. Each tube keeps the seeds from different places separate, and bubblers and pumps aerate and move sterile seawater to keep the seeds healthy.

Bundaberg based CMERC PhD student Kristie, setting up seed storage devices.

Seagrass flower emerging