PMEP Funds Catalina Island Eelgrass Restoration, California

PMEP has awarded FY25 funds from the National Fish Habitat Partnership to the Santa Monica Bay Foundation to continue its work restoring eelgrass around Catalina Island. The Bay Foundation will restore critical fish habitat connectivity on Catalina Island by transplanting 60,000 square feet of native Pacific eelgrass (Zostera pacifica) to a cove that historically supported a robust seagrass bed. The project team will transplant over 4,000 vegetative (asexual) buds, or turions, constituting the first transplant of this species on Catalina Island and the largest Zostera pacifica transplant to date. The project also includes robust monitoring with time lapse cameras deployments to document conditions.