Category: Swale

Hi all, 

My name is Wenna and I work at the Zoological Society of London (ZSL) on a project calledRestoring the Thamescape. I may have met some of you last year on seagrass seed picking surveys at Seasalter, or earlier in 2023 at a water quality monitoring workshop led by Anna Cucknell and Thea Cox.

I wanted to reach out as we are planning for more seagrass seed picking days thisSeptember and October, and therefore we are looking for volunteers to help pick the seagrass seeds. I wanted to see if anybody from this group would be interested in joining us?

I’ve attached a seed picking guide which includes some background to the project and explains why we’re picking seagrass seeds.

The details are as follows:

• When: Fri 13^th Sept (11:00 – 15:30 approx. ending time) and Fri 27^th Sept (12:00 – 16:00 approx. ending time)
  • October dates tbc.
• Where: meet at Seasalter Sailing Club (https://maps.app.goo.gl/6Cbdq6CWASCyntKt7)
• The ZSL team would provide the necessary training and equipment, however, all volunteers would need to wear wellington boots and clothes that you don’t mind getting muddy (not trainers or walking boots)

To participate, we ask that volunteers confirm that they’re comfortable with:

• Walking on the coastal footpath/uneven ground for approx. 20-30 minutes from the car park to the seed picking site
• Carrying some bits of equipment. We use trolleys to keep this to a minimum but someequipment such as body boards will need to be carried
• Walking a short distance on soft mud
• Kneeling on a body board in a crouched position for long periods of time to find and pick the seeds from the meadow (see photo attached). The seeds are approximately the size of a sesame seed so we must be low down/close to the meadow to spot them!

I am away on leave next week, so if you are interested in our September dates – please reply to Jemima.Phillips@zsl.org copied into this email by Monday 9^th Sept, specifying which date you would like to join us on. For September, we have 3 volunteer spots available for each day, and 2 reserve spots, which will be filled on a first-come, first-serve basis.

If you are interested in volunteering in October – please also reply to either myself Morwenna.Grigg@zsl.org orJemima.Phillips@zsl.org and we will follow up with you at the end of September. There will be 5 volunteer spots available for dates in October, and 2 reserve spots for each day.

We’d love to have you join us on our seed picking mission, which we hope will lead to new healthy seagrass meadows across the estuary.

Please feel free to share this information with other people you think might be interested 😊

Many thanks,

Wenna

Wenna Grigg

Project Officer | Estuaries & Wetlands

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