In Baltic Sea, citizen divers restore seagrass to fight climate change

In the mid-1990s, a small fishing community in Baja California Sur stopped fishing to give their depleted reef a chance to recover. Thirty years later, Cabo Pulmo National Park stands as one of the most documented cases of marine conservation success in the world. Scientific monitoring confirmed a 463% increase in marine biomass within a decade of protection. Drawing on this evidence, marine scientists have developed the Marine Prosperity Areas (MPpAs) framework, a replicable model that integrates ecological restoration with community well-being.

A social enterprise that started in the Netherlands and is spreading to countries around the Celtic Sea is training young people to work in marine industries while restoring ocean biodiversity. The young trainees work on projects like marine mammal observation and planting seagrass.

A project at the Volgenau Virginia Coast Reserve has restored 10,000 acres of seagrass meadow. For two decades, scientists and volunteers have worked together to collect, process, and plant seeds to grow the carbon-storing underwater plants.

Rewilding Europe is a river-restoration project working to preserve rivers as biodiversity hotspots and prevent damage from human activity. Since Rewilding Europe was founded, its projects have stretched across the continent, including to countries like Spain Italy, Bulgaria, and Sweden and was recently awarded a grant of £4.1m to scale up its work.

In Kenya, the Mikoko Pamoja project promotes the preservation and restoration of mangrove forests by selling carbon offset credits. The revenue is used to improve local villages by providing things like water, healthcare, and education.

A unique partnership between scientists, state agencies, and coastal communities in Washington state allows these different entities to monitor and manage toxic algal blooms. Known as the Olympic Region Harmful Algal Blooms Partnership, the initiative allows them to take water samples and analyze them for domoic acid, which is a deadly neurotoxin produced by algae. This collaboration allows fishers from tribal communities to know if it’s safe to harvest seafood and state officials to warn people when it becomes unsafe.

Vaan Island, off the coast of Indian in the Gulf of Mannar, is rapidly sinking. But scientists are working to prevent that erosion by replanting seagrass, which is an important plant in a marine ecosystem. Despite fishermen pulling up the seagrass with their nets, so far, nine acres of seagrass have been rehabilitated in the area.

Lake associations in New Hampshire are using a combination of chemical herbicide treatments, manual diver removal, and volunteer Lake Host inspection programs to manage invasive variable milfoil. Since 2002, their work has achieved up to 100% reduction in treated areas, and more than 1,500 invasive species intercepted at boat launches statewide.

A multi-stakeholder partnership in Baltimore transformed their polluted harbor into a swimmable waterway. The combination of innovative trash collection systems (Mr. Trash Wheel), a $430 million sewage treatment facility that reduced overflows by 80%, floating wetlands (which restored natural habitats for 139 species), and a continuous water quality monitoring program altogether overcame intense infrastructure investments and decades of sustained contrary efforts.

The Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation worked to restore extinct Chinook salmon populations by building their own fish hatchery, establishing legislation, and creating a consensus-based advisory committee that brings government, agriculture, business, and conservation groups together to coordinate water management. Salmon returns have dramatically increased from about 60 fish in 2023 to over 900 in 2025.