Larva
This week I am following another thread, not about rodents (this time) but a bivalve. Also, you may notice that there's a new logo in town.
What is seagrass?
If you are anything like me (which, if you are, you are well aware of the pluses and minuses), you may not have known that the shallow slopes of the Earth’s coastlines (try saying that four times quickly), from the sultry tropics to the chilly Arctic, are home to underwater meadows of seagrasses.
(See scientific picture below if you like maps. The dark green bits are where you find seagrass meadows, some large enough to be seen from space!).
These little green dots (less than 0.1 percent of ocean area) provide nurseries for some of the largest fisheries on the planet plus they provide habitat (habitat = homes) to millions (billions?) of animals (is a plankton an animal? Answer: a phytoplankton is a plant, but a zooplankton is an animal, so yes, billions). Seagrasses — the flowering plants of the sea! — provide important protection to coasts (from erosion, storms and floods) and also act as giant filters to make water cleaner.
People have used seagrasses for more than 10,000 years to fertilize fields, insulate houses, weave furniture and thatch roofs (not to mention eating fish, crabs, clams and being utterly delighted by sea otters all of which rely on this habitat). The world’s oldest living organism is a patch of Mediterranean seagrass, Posidonia oceanica - estimated to be 200,000 years old!
Seagrass can store carbon like nobody’s business. It sucks carbon up and buries it in ocean sediment for a millenia (long enough for our purposes that is). Year after year it just keeps sucking it up and burying it, storing carbon in the Earth, right where we like it. So in summary we want MORE seagrass and not less.
You know I’m not going to get into statistics about rates of disappearance. But the trend line isn’t amazing. Modern times, condominiums, cheap shrimp, et cetera. All the chemicals from all the things across all the land draining into all the rivers and emptying out…
What kinds of stories am I looking for?
I was at a soccer game last weekend, talking to another mom. She’s not an activist. She doesn’t bleed green or do work in the ‘enviro’ space. She’s just a nice mom who worries about a lot of things and used my recipe for cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving this year. After briefly discussing AI we had moved on to other upsetting topics and she said something like: We know it’s time to fix what we have here (And she meant, like, our planet.) We know that’s what we need to do. So why aren’t we doing it?
I wonder if you ever have that same thought. I do, sometimes. But for some reason — I guess it’s just the way I’m made — my antenna are set to look for ways that we ARE doing it (it’s not just a river in Egypt). There is evidence all around of a transformation taking place — if that’s what you’re looking for — and I think if we can send signals to one another of what to support, what to build, what to imagine, we can feel better on the way to getting there (wherever there turns out to be).
And also: not just how to do different. To be able to see what we already do, the value in the small actions we already take to care for what’s around us. Not piling on checklists of what to replace with what else, but an awareness of the enoughness of what we have, do, and are. An awareness of how life provides chances already every day to treat what is with love and reverence. How seeing what and who is right in front of us to whom we can offer a smile or encouragement — or more if we have more to offer — how that can be enough also.
Back to the grass
Seagrass meadows in Virginia were wiped out in the 1930s (from an ocean-borne pandemic and a hurricane, not our fault!) and did not recover. But look what we did (humans, I mean):
“Over the past two decades, in four coastal bays, 74 million eelgrass seeds have been broadcast into 536 restoration plots that had been barren for nearly half a century. The grasses have spread to nine thousand acres and have become the largest eelgrass habitat between Long Island and North Carolina. Once established, the grasses clear the water and moderate the waves, providing seafloor stability and sufficient light for the plants to thrive and reseed naturally.”
from Regeneration, Paul Hawken
What comes next is why I’m sharing this story
Scallops can walk and you should look this up on YouTube. They squeeze their shell pieces together using all that delicious muscle and propel themselves across the ocean floor. In an unplanned and unexpected turn of events, scallops (y’all) have walked 20 miles from their nearest spawning cages (ok, well, that’s not true, their larvae — zooplankton! — have drifted down the coast) and established a population in the reserve.
I don’t know if you’ve heard about the wolves in Yellowstone. But there are certain species that, if they return to an area, can have a massive impact on restoring function to an ecosystem. Different “keystone” species in different kinds of places. Scallops are one of those species. They are also really good indicators of water quality. So when they show up — on their own accord, and by accord I mean per nature’s directives and not ours (and by ours I mean people’s), when the scallops move back in, that’s when the good stuff can really start to happen. When the scallops arrive, cleaning the water, getting eaten by bigger guys, walkin' around, that’s when you get a thriving, flourishing community.
So what?
What excites me is the unexpectedness. The possibility for healing - and that it doesn’t all rely on us, we don’t have to/can’t even possibly ever manage everything. We don’t have to plan it all, we just need to make space for recovery to happen. That scallops can walk.
Seeing that when we support and nourish what brings health to the world, the world responds by creating more health. That those little patches of seagrass can now grow and support a thriving community upon which thriving communities of people can, in a thoughtful, respectful, and balanced way, if we are willing, rely on to generate health for us and the rest of the creatures we live with and depend upon, thankfully and willingly.
That people have been working on this for decades. That there is work underway and has been work underway to understand how to meet the challenges that we are facing. Beautiful, thoughtful, intelligent, dedicated people have been hard at work since before we were sapiens learning, listening, seeking, trying. There is so much good work that’s gone before us, there are so many possibilities.
We can learn what it means to steward, to be gardeners. We can feel how much we have to share. We can support beautiful work and healthy places. And wouldn’t it be fun to do it together?
Some other things I really want to share with you
Other stories that I really love and think about frequently:
111 Trees per Daughter Changed This Village’s Future: How an unusual ritual led to fewer child marriages, less flooding, a boom in girls’ education — and a cultural transformation.
Recycled Glass, Turned into Sand, Is Restoring Louisiana’s Coastline: Two college kids at Tulane were lamenting the fact that the wine bottle they had emptied could not be recycled. So they started a freakin’ recycling program. Glass Half Full Nola is a low-profit limited liability company whose primary purpose is to achieve a social benefit. So far, they have diverted 3.2 million pounds of glass from landfills with just eight employees.
And the Chopstick guy! Making a Desk with 10,000 Recycled Chopsticks: A German engineer asked restaurants for their used chopsticks — and a sustainable furnishings business was born.
You may notice that all of these stories come from Reasons to be Cheerful to which I subscribe. If you sign up, they do not send lots of emails and the ones they do send are usually very uplifting. It’s free to receive their updates or you can choose to pay for a membership (which I do because I am a big fan and my life feels better because of the work these people do).
A Psalm for the Wild-Built, by Becky Chambers, may be my favorite book that I have read this decade. Or maybe the book I have had the most pleasure in reading. A decade is a long time, and I don’t remember a lot of it, but from what I do remember this ranks very very highly for me. It is science fiction about a tea monk who meets a sentient robot. I visit the world Becky Chambers created in my mind, fairly regularly.
And finally, for today, a movie that is delightful and worth watching:
Thanks for reading and for joining me on this adventure as I ask the question — How can I learn to be a hearthling? — and then follow the clues that life provides.
Notes:
I am still thinking about the do-gooders club. One reader asked me about my plans. I love her and she lives in the Netherlands and is an incredible cartoonist. What kind of do-gooders club could span continents and pull together talents and resources, like stone soup? I am never short of ideas, but narrowing them down is another story.
If you are liking the hearthling and feel like offering me any encouragement, or simply salutations, let me offer you a buffet of options. One option is to send me a note (if you respond to this message it will come straight to my inbox). I know I have been historically underwhelming at responding to correspondence, but I’m getting better. Please try again. Another option is to leave a ‘heart’ on Substack or a comment - these are helpful because of algorithms and also they mean a lot to me and my fledgling publication. And, of course, forwarding these messages to others who might enjoy them using the little forward button below, or any oldfashioned way you choose, is very acceptable. If you have any ideas, concerns, or questions, or stories you’ve heard that give you hope or organizations you love to support or any other hearthling-like thoughts to share, I would love to hear them in the comments or via an email. I’m also very curious to hear from long-time readers. What do you think about the Substack format and theme versus the older emails? What do you think about the hearthling and do you wish to read more droll anecdotes about my life and times?
I haven’t finished reading it yet but the quote above about seagrasses is taken from Paul Hawken’s book Regeneration. There’s also an organization Regeneration, linked to the ideas in the book, and their website has tons of info (in “the Nexus”) on actions individuals can take “to end the climate crisis in one generation.” Here’s a link to their page on seagrass-related action.
The logo was created on canva.com with artistic approval by my inhouse design consultants who insisted on the orange. I like the heart-shaped leaves. The orange represents a hearth, for gathering and nourishing.
Wonderful work Jennifer! Sent it to Monica.
Thanks for the links and books references... The last one is already in my 'want to read' list [how can I not read a book with a tea monk!!!] and the movie for tonight's screening. Your story about scallops is close to home, it was my father's favourite food.