From the Buzzards Bay Coalition · November 9, 2026
The Buzzards Bay Coalition reports that Melanie Hayn, its Brenninkmeyer Post Doctoral Fellow, has just completed a planting test in West Falmouth Harbor. The Coalition describes it as the first of its kind in any of Falmouth’s long-impaired but slowly improving embayments. In late October, Hayn and two colleagues from the Marine Biological Laboratory, Miranda Roethler and Sarah Merolla, marked planting spots in the harbor’s South Basin, using a PVC triangle nearly 50 feet in perimeter as a guide. They were to repeat the steps in four more testing fields within the harbor. The following week the team planted seeds in tea-bag sheaths, which protect them from predators, so they will be ready to germinate in early spring. At that time Hayn plans to help Roethler plant young eelgrass shoots grown in tanks at the Marine Biological Laboratory.
The Coalition says Buzzards Bay has lost 75 percent of its historic eelgrass coverage, with positive signs of recovery as nitrogen pollution levels have dropped in recent years. It says earlier large-scale seeding work, such as the Virginia Institute of Marine Science’s, scattered seeds in vast quantities without capturing data on where and how the plants thrive. The West Falmouth test is meant to find the most efficient way to bring eelgrass back. Waquoit Bay shares the same question: CPWB’s explainer on nitrogen says extra nitrogen has cost Waquoit Bay nearly all of its eelgrass.
Read the full story from the Buzzards Bay Coalition: “In the Weeds” →
This is CPWB’s summary of a news article. The full article and its photos are published by the Buzzards Bay Coalition.
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