Seed
Grown from local stock
Spores are collected from surviving beds within eight kilometres of each site, cultured on twine, and planted by hand from a small boat. Imported stock does not hold.
Kelp holds carbon, shelters juvenile fish, and takes the force out of a storm before it reaches the shore. We have replanted 1,240 hectares of it, and we publish the survey data whether or not it flatters us.
1,240
Hectares replanted since 2015
31
Monitored sites
68%
Canopy survival at year three
Restoration is unglamorous and takes a decade. We do not run campaigns about it; we run surveys.
Seed
Spores are collected from surviving beds within eight kilometres of each site, cultured on twine, and planted by hand from a small boat. Imported stock does not hold.
Protect
Grazing collapse is what killed these beds. We thin urchin density to a threshold and then leave the site alone, because a barren with no urchins is also a dead one.
Measure
Divers run the same transects each quarter. Canopy cover, holdfast density, and fish counts go into the public dataset within thirty days, unedited.
Two of our sites are not recovering. They are in the table, because leaving them out would make the other twenty-nine meaningless.
| Site | Planted | Canopy, year 3 | Holdfast density | Fish count vs baseline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dunmanus Bay | 2021 | 74% | 11.2 / m² | +240% |
| Roaringwater | 2020 | 81% | 14.0 / m² | +310% |
| Kenmare North | 2022 | 66% | 9.4 / m² | +155% |
| Bantry Inner | 2019 | 28% | 3.1 / m² | +12% |
| Clew Bay South | 2021 | 19% | 1.8 / m² | no change |
| Sherkin East | 2018 | 88% | 16.3 / m² | +405% |
That figure includes the surveys, which is why it is higher than you will see quoted elsewhere. Nothing is counted as restored until it has held canopy through three winters.
Support a hectare