Contact: Gordon Helm FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
10/28/96
The Alliance for Chesapeake Bay has received a $30,000 grant from the National Marine Fisheries Service Restoration Center to evaluate how best to use volunteers in restoring sea grass in areas where this valuable marine habitat has been lost. The funds are being distributed through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Chesapeake Bay Office.
The Alliance and NOAA's Chesapeake Bay office are conducting a community-based sea grass restoration project in the St. Mary's River, a tributary of the Potomac River in southern Maryland. The project has two goals: to assess the potential for increasing public involvement in restoration projects, and to evaluate transplantation techniques at sites in the Chesapeake Bay area where this sea grass formerly existed and where water quality requirements of submerged aquatic vegetation are now being met.
"We will use the funds to determine how to best restore areas of sea grass and other submerged aquatic vegetation by using our most valuable resource, involved citizens," said Fran Flanigan, Alliance executive director.
A recent transplanting demonstration reviewed techniques to be used in a larger transplanting project by citizen volunteers in the spring of 1997. Later this month volunteers will be trained in techniques of water quality monitoring -- one of several comparative measures used to determine the successfulness of vegetation growth and survival. Following the transplant, the Alliance will complete its report assessing the efficacy of using volunteers to restore vegetation, and forward it to NOAA.
The Alliance is a private, non-profit, non-advocacy organization representing diverse interest groups dedicated to protecting and restoring the ecological health of the Chesapeake Bay and surrounding watershed through education, hands-on restoration projects, and public policy research and analysis.
"We expect this investment to improve coastal habitat and give us the knowledge to effectively involve interested and concerned volunteers in habitat restoration programs, both here in the bay, and wherever habitat restoration can be accomplished with volunteer help," said Jim Burgess, acting director of the fisheries service's Office of Habitat Conservation.
The NMFS Restoration Center is the focal point within NOAA for restoring habitat important to the well-being of our nation's living marine resources. As part of its mission, the Restoration Center funds peer-reviewed and community-based restoration work designed to improve understanding of restoration ecology and the quality of coastal habitat nationwide.
The NOAA Chesapeake Bay Office funds peer-reviewed research directed at bay living resource problems, participates in Chesapeake Bay Program activities, provides technical assistance, and disseminates results and information to the general public.
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