The Ocean Conservation Trust and its Blue Meadows project are protecting and restoring 100 hectares of seagrass meadows in Falmouth Harbour and along the UK’s south coast. eDNA surveys gave the project critical biodiversity insights. They provide the data needed to track restoration outcomes, report efficiently to stakeholders and make the case for wider conservation measures.

The Ocean Conservation Trust and Blue Meadows aim to protect and regenerate 700 hectares of seagrass meadows across the UK within five years. To do this, they needed a biodiversity monitoring method that could:

• Scale across this extensive area
• Track the outcomes of their interventions
• Report results simply to stakeholders and the public

They had already trialled conventional methods, including baited remote underwater video (BRUV), but these were too expensive and time-consuming to give insight at ecosystem scale.

NatureMetrics provided an efficient, cost-effective eDNA solution that can monitor biodiversity across whole regions of seagrass habitat. It turns the data into simple metrics and insights that inform conservation decisions. In year one, 18 sites across the Trust’s restoration areas were surveyed and analysed using NatureMetrics’ fish metabarcoding service. Together, they established a robust biodiversity baseline.

The surveys detected more than 50 species, including:

• Pipefish, gobies and blennies
• Wrasses, clingfish and rockling
• Sand eels
• Familiar commercially fished species

Sand eels and sand smelt dominated, accounting for over half of the total eDNA signal in almost every sample.

eDNA monitoring helps the Ocean Conservation Trust and Blue Meadows to:

• Track restoration success: Follow how sites develop ecologically after seagrass planting.
• Report to investors: Efficiently monitor large-scale, investment-backed regeneration projects and report back to stakeholders.
• Spot threats early: Detect invasive species and pollution impacts before they escalate.
• Engage local people: Involve the community in sampling events and share insights with recreational users and people whose livelihoods depend on the habitat.

eDNA makes it possible to monitor seagrass biodiversity across the UK in a robust, comparable way, including key fisheries species. That supports the Trust’s mission to reverse decades of seagrass decline at scale. The next step is to extend eDNA monitoring across all Blue Meadows sites, with comparable surveys in every season.