The Sea's Greener Pastures

Underwater meadows of seagrass play a crucial role in the marine ecosystem yet are poorly understood – something Wakatobi Resort is helping to rectify.

- Karen Stearns

GUESTS AT WAKATOBI RESORT, ON A small island off southeastern Sulawesi, have been known to spend entire days snorkelling the house reef. The continuing profusion and diversity of life that keeps them rapt is thanks to a strategy implemented by the resort’s founder, Lorenz Mäder. Even before construction of the resort began, he met with the area’s fishermen and villagers to propose a no-fishing sanctuary along six kilometres of reef. In exchange for them honouring this conservation zone, the resort would make direct lease payments to area villages. So began the Collaborative Reef Conservation Program, which has since grown to encompass some 20 kilometres of reef.

The real secret to the programme’s success though is that it protects not just corals but vital meadows of seagrass that grow in the shallows. Together with similar places around the world, they comprise some of the most extensive grasslands on the planet, but you don’t hear much about them. They cover tens of thousands of acres around the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia – the latter alone having 10% of the world’s total seagrass population. Some seagrass meadows are even large enough to be seen from space.