Home / Programs / Seagrass for Snapper / Environmentally Friendly Moorings, North West Bay Tasmania

11 EFM’s

installed

11,000 m2 of seagrass

allowed to recover

10 community events

held

Heavy chains lead to scrapes

Traditional chain moorings drag along the ocean floor when the boats move in the wind and currents. This dragging action destroys the seagrass habitat on the seafloor creating barren mooring scrapes.

Whilst they are still anchored to the sea floor, environmentally friendly moorings are neutrally buoyant and don’t have heavy chains at the bottom. This means that the seagrass is protected, providing much needed habitat for our favourite fish.


This picture shows a mooring scrape caused by a traditional chain mooring.

More than just moorings

These environmentally friendly moorings, designed by CSIRO, give seagrass habitat a chance to recover. Over the last five years the CSIRO have been working to hone the design and increase uptake of EFMs, and make it easier and cheaper to install them.

There are over 3,000 moorings in Tasmania and each chain mooring can remove up to 1,000 m2 of marine habitat. An area with multiple mooring ‘scrapes’ creates a broader patchwork of damage to entire ecological communities, such as seagrass, which can cause them to collapse.

Swapping the old for new

As part of this project, volunteers swapped their traditional moorings for a new EFM, the Environmentally Sustainable CSIRO mooring (ES CSIRO). By winter 2022, eleven ES CSIRO moorings were installed across North West Bay.

Although not enough time has passed since the EFMs were installed to see any measurable habitat recovery, it is hoped that results from follow up surveys scheduled for autumn 2024 will start to show signs of early recovery.

By helping prevent mooring scrapes we’re protecting the seagrass which is home to some of our favourite rec target species such as squid and leatherjackets.

Fish elements

Fish love to find food in and around seagrass beds. You’ll know if you’ve ever gone out hunting squid or King George whiting, seagrass beds are the place to go.

Juvenile fish rely on seagrass and use it as a place to hide from predators like bigger fish and to shelter from the currents.

Seagrass also helps to keep sediment in place, improve water quality, increase biodiversity, are themselves are an important food source for some species and act as surface for algae to attach to.

Last but not least, many of the shallow coastal ecosystems affected by chain moorings, such as seagrass, are important natural carbon sinks. They can sequester large amounts of carbon per unit area – up to 40 times more than forests!

LATEST NEWS

6 DECEMBER 2022 | Devil in the detail for Tasmanian seagrass restoration 

6 DECEMBER 2022 | Devil in the detail for Tasmanian seagrass restoration 

At OzFish, we’re aware more than most of the importance of seagrass meadows and the extent to which this vital habitat has disappeared from Australia’s coastline.  It is estimated that Australia has lost almost 30 per cent of its seagrass meadows since 18801. Tasmania has not escaped unscathed, with much of the state’s seagrass habitats having been lost, fragmented, or damaged.  However, the restoration of seagrass in Tasmanian waters is getting underway and we’re proud to be playing a leading role. 

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This project is supported by NRM South, through funding from the Australian Government’s Fisheries Habitat Restoration Program, and BCF – Boating, Camping, Fishing.