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Martin County tests seagrass restoration methods, including clam propagation, after manatee die‑offs
Summary
Martin County’s environmental team is expanding seagrass restoration and experimental shellfish propagation after recent manatee mortality events prompted increased funding and attention to estuary habitat.
Martin County has expanded seagrass restoration and monitoring efforts and is piloting an experimental shellfish‑propagation technique to improve conditions in the Indian River Lagoon, Environmental Resources Division Administrator John Mayle said.
The county intensified restoration after several manatee mortality events focused attention on seagrass declines in the estuary, Mayle said. Funding that followed allowed the county to scale up planting and monitoring to determine which approaches work best.
"We've got a group of overachievers in the division that love this stuff. And so we've been working through different aspects of seagrass restoration. We're working with some partners on just doing lots of planting and putting lots of grasses out there," Mayle said. He added the county has substantially increased monitoring to track which plantings survive and why.
A University of Florida researcher’s presentation prompted county staff to investigate the role of small bivalves in making sediments suitable for seagrass. Mayle said the county and a shellfish‑farming partner have obtained grant funds and developed a method to propagate a native clam found in healthy meadows; the plan is to transplant those clams together with seagrass plantings.
County staff framed the work as experimental and part of a learning process: "We feel like we are close enough to achieving some of those water quality goals that we need to be learning lessons that we need to know to be effective when that happens," Mayle said. He noted that historically seagrass restoration has struggled to reach high success rates and emphasized the value of learning now while other basin water‑quality projects progress.
Project partners and exact grant amounts were not fully detailed in the conversation. Mayle described the clam propagation method as refined with a shellfish‑farming partner and said county staff are "growing out our own batch" of clams to deploy alongside meadow restorations.
County staff will continue planting, monitoring and adaptive adjustments; leaders said they expect to evaluate success across seasons and update methods accordingly.
