UNC researchers say North Carolina seagrasses are unusually diverse and worth about $560 per hectare to commercial fisheries

Joel Faudry, director of the UNC Institute of Marine Sciences, and PhD candidate Madeline Payne presented research on North Carolina seagrass beds and their economic value to commercial fisheries.

Faudry said North Carolina eelgrass stands out in regional comparisons. "North Carolina has the highest genetic diversity within our eelgrass meadows of any place in this ocean basin," he told commissioners, and reported the team found little evidence of wasting disease in the meadows they sampled. He said comparative experiments also show unusually high trophic transfer in local meadows, meaning seagrass here supports rapid consumption and a high diversity of juvenile fish.

That ecological context framed Payne's analysis of commercial value. Payne described a multistep method using trawl surveys, age-class composition and production tables to estimate lifetime production and the portion of that biomass extracted by commercial fisheries. "That equates to $560 per hectare of seagrass, and that's for each year," she said, noting the estimate is conservative and limited to commercial landings (2023 dollars).

Why it matters: seagrass meadows act as nursery habitat for commercially valuable species (shrimp, spot, gag and several snapper species, blue crab and others). Faudry emphasized the long-term stakes: mapping between 2006 and 2013 shows a shift from contiguous meadows to more patchy coverage and an estimated 7–8% decline in mapped acreage over that interval. He cautioned patchiness can make losses more serious than acreage figures suggest.

Both presenters stressed methodological limits and next steps. Payne said her estimate assumes perfect trawl catch efficiency and excludes prey biomass and recreational value, so the $560 figure likely understates total ecosystem benefits. Faudry urged experiments to test restoration approaches (seed deployment trials and low-tech to robotic planting) and to investigate drivers of patchiness (storms, sedimentation, water quality, disease).

Commissioners asked about species composition, timing and the link between estuarine production and oceanic stocks. Payne identified mutton, lane and gray snapper among the snappers included in her trawl-based analysis and acknowledged gaps in migration and connectivity data for some reef-associated species. Faudry said that while seagrass is clearly important, precise quantitative links between habitat area and fishery yield remain an open scientific challenge.

Next steps: researchers requested continued access and collaboration with DMF staff and advisory committees for mapping updates, pilot restoration trials, and broader valuation work that would incorporate prey production and recreational benefits.