Adopt a Conch! Read all about Seagrasses in Lac BayThe Conch Restoration Program is one of IUCN ‘what if we change’ projects, funded by the Dutch Postcode Lottery. The project

These infosheets are donated by the Bon Kousa Foundation Bonaire | www.bonkousa.org

Adopt a Conch!

• W h y t h i s i n f o r m a t i o n a b o u t s e a g r a s s ?

• W h a t s e a g r a s s e s c a n w e f i n d i n L a c

• M o r e s e a g r a s s e s a n d . . . f o o d

• W o r l d w i d e s e a g r a s s i n f o r m a t i o n

• H o w t o r e a c h i n v o l v e d o r g a n i s a t i o n s

Read all about Seagrasses in Lac Bay

Why this information about seagrass?


Adopt a Conch!

In addition to the constant care of STINAPA and the Mangrove Center, two important conservation projects are happening in the Bonaire Lac Bay Area today: the Conch Restoration Project and the Seagrass Protection Project. For both projects the seagrass beds in Lac are vital for the health and existence of the animals they protect. Seagrass is often overlooked, both literally and figuratively. We walk through it without real-izing we are seriously damaging the grass, and we see it as “just grass” whereas actually it is a very important living environment for many spe-cies. The Conch Restoration Project would like to offer you these information sheets to read, with production made possible through donations to the Adopt-a-Conch! program.

The Conch Restoration Project consists of both an extensive awareness campaign for children and adults plus a scientific research program. A team of scientists is gathering information on the habitat and the queen conch stock. Last year an inventory was made of conch in Lac Bay. Almost all conch are tagged in order to identify and follow growth and migration or movements of the queen conch and its habitat during the project. The conch will be monitored regarding reproduction and health. This must lead to a strategy to restore the conch population to old levels, based on verified data of the population of conch in Lac Bay. To inform the Bonaire visitor of the conch restoration program the Bon Kousa Foundation started the awareness program ‘Adopt-a-Conch!’ Please participate in helping the conch: you can adopt your own individu-ally numbered conch and give it a pet-name!! For more info please visit www.conchbonaire.org

Dear Visitor and Dive friend!!

The Queen Conch is endangered species on Bonaire.You can help protect the Queen Conch by adopting one of our

scientifi cally tagged conches in Lac Bay Sorobon Bonaire. For more info go to our website: www.conchbonaire.org

Adopt a Conch!Donated by the Bon Kousa Foundation Bonaire | www.bonkousa.org

www.conchbonaire.org

‘Ban trese Karkó bèk!’ ‘Let’s bring back the conch!’

Leave them alone so we will have more in the future

Give the conch a chance to grow up and reproduce.

If you see someone taking conch please phone STINAPA

at 7171-8444 or 786-9603

Adopt a Conch !

You can help protect the Queen Conch by adopting one of our tagged conch in Lac Bay Bonaire.

For more information please visit our website:


The Conch Restoration Program is one of IUCN ‘what if we change’ projects, funded by the Dutch Postcode Lottery. The project in Lac Bay Bonaire is managed by DCNA and Stinapa.

The Seagrass Protection Project is a program of Sea Turtle Conservation Bonaire. Stinapa provides important support to the project. The Conch Restoration Program also works on seagrass protection and restoration.

What seagrasses can we find in Lac?

A broad leaved grass; with rhizomes and seasonally small white green flowers. Its main way of expansion is through the growth of rhizomes or root-stalks. The leaves can be over 1 cm broad and over 30 cm long. It occurs in sheltered lagoons and in clear water can be found at up to 30m deep. This is the most common seagrass species on Bonaire, and very important in the diet of turtles. In Lac Bay are extensive beds of this species. In our research we found Thalassia testudinum in 199 out of 264 m2 of our survey. Turtle grass also provides nutrition to the conch. They don’t eat the leaves themselves, except sometimes decaying leaves, but feed on all the small plants and animals that are attached to the leaves.

And there is lot growing on those leaves, tiny plants and tiny animals. The least pleasant of them maybe being the turtlegras anemone, Viatrix globulifera, whose sting will itch for a couple of days!

Photo: Sabine Engel

Thalassia testudinum - turtle grass

Without this seagrass Lac would look totally different as it traps a lot of sediments and stabilize the sub-strate. Juvenile fish can be found here: it is an impor-tant nursery area. Often overlooked but extremely important is its capacity to sequester carbon dioxide, one of the culprits of climate change. It can with-stand exposure to air; the seagrassbeds don’t suffer too much when the water is extremely low.

However, they don’t do well with trampling and destruc-tion of rhizomes by people walking through the grass, the keels of windsurf boards or the propellers of outboards. For this reason part of the seagrass near the popular beaches at

Sorobon have been protected, and turnaround buoys have been deployed near the mangroves where the area is shallow.

Photo: Sabine Engel

Thalassia - with turtlegrass anemone

Ruppia maritima is a thread-thin, grasslike annual or perennial herb which grows from a rhizome, a creep-ing rootstalk. It produces a long, narrow, straight or loosely coiled cluster of flowers tipped with two tiny flowers. The plant often self-pollinates, but also releases pollen that floats away on bubbles.

The fruits are small in the form of a drop with a fleshy outside and the seed inside (like cherries). They are dispersed in the water and inside the guts of fish and waterbirds that eat them. The plant also reproduces vegetatively by sprouting from its rhizome.

This plant is an important part of the diet of many species of waterfowl. In many areas, wetlands restora-tion begins with the recovery and protection of this plant. On Bonaire the plant only occurs at the outer edges of Lac Bay in the ponds in the back of the man-groves. In terms of cover it is not significant.

Photo: Flickr

Ruppia maritima -wigeon grass

This seagrass can easily be recognized; it looks like strands of spaghetti underwater. The blades can be up to 30 cm long. Like other seagrasses this species has flowers and is anchored in the bottom through a network of rhizomes.

Again, for propagation the growth of the rhizomes is more important than the reproduction through the flowers.

In terms of cover, food source and nursery area this species is not as important as the turtle grass. Mana-tee’s don’t occur here, but turtles eat it, and conch use it as well.

Photo: Flickr

Syringodium filiforme - manatee grass


Adopt a Conch!

Thalassium flower


Adopt a Conch!

More about seagrasses & food!

Shoalgrass forms very fine plants, with small and thin leaves, and only occurs at a couple of places in Lac, in the very shallow areas.

Halodule beaudettei is capable of both sexual and vegetative reproduction. However, flowering in this species is thought to be extremely rare. Halodule beaudettei does not grow well in established beds of Thalassia, but can quickly invade an area where Thalassia was removed. In areas where Ruppia was dense, Halodule and Syringodium were sparse. Dense beds of Halodule can be found in high salinity areas where Thalassia and Syringodium are not found.

Turtles love it, but it forms only a small part of their diet on Bonaire.

Photo: Encyclopedia of life

Halodule beaudettei - shoal grass

This is a species that originates from the Western Indian Ocean: Red Sea and East Africa, Persian Gulf, to southwestern coast of India, but ‘invaded’ the Medi-terranean after the opening of the Suez Channel.

And recently, after 2003, it has been found in the Caribbean, where it is becoming a pest. On Bonaire it has firs been spotted in 2010, and we see it spreading rapidly.

Another species in this genus, Halophila johnsonii is a threatened species. This species however, is not threatened but a threat in itself. In its native area it forms a food source for invertebrates and fish. We don’t know yet what the impact will be here: will it compete with turtlegrass? Will turtles and other fauna start to feed on it?

Photo: Sabine Engel

Halophila stipulacea - halophila

The queen conch uses the seagrass beds in different ways. They hide in them from predators, the conch shell blending in perfectly with the sandy substrate, and the grass hiding their size.

And of course it is an important food source. Not so much the grass itself, though they will nibble on an old piece of grass. Queen conch scrape the algue of the grass, and that is their main source of nutrition. It is a symbiosis, the conch gets the food, the grass gets cleaned up, and the chlorophyl can catch more sunlight.

Photo: Sabine Engel

Food for Queen Conch

In the oceans, sea turtles, especially green sea turtles, are one of the creatures (manatees, but also sea urchins and herbivorous fish are others) that eat the seagrass that grows on the sea floor.

Beds of healthy seagrass are essential breeding and development areas for many species of fish and other marine life. A decline or loss of seagrass beds would damage these populations, triggering a chain reac-tion and negatively impacting marine and human life.

Photo: Flickr

Food for Turtles

Adopt a Conch!

Worldwide seagrass information


Adopt a Conch!

What are seagrasses?Seagrasses are ancient plants that evolved from land plants when dinosaurs roamed the earth. They are not seaweeds (marine algae). Seagrasses are unique plants that flower underwater and have colo-nized all but the most polar seas. There are only 60 species of sea-grass globally.

Seagrasses grow under sea ice as well as adjacent to coral reefs. They live in shallow water along exposed coasts and in sheltered lagoons and estuaries.

Seagrasses and peopleOver a billion people live within 30 miles (~50 km) of a seagrass mead-ow. Millions of people obtain their protein from animals that live in seagrasses.

Seagrasses have been used by hu-mans for over 10,000 years. Sea-grasses have been used to insulate houses, stuff furniture, thatch roofs, and even were used to stuff seats in early models of Volkswagens. In Zanzibar, Africa, fishermen have gone to war over access to sea-grass meadows for gathering food

like fish and shellfish. Seri Indians in Mexico collect seagrass seeds to make flour and the month of har-vest is named for the local seagrass.

They are the first line of defense along much of the world’s coast-lines, intercepting pollution that would harm the ocean.

An acre of seagrass• Absorbs 6.4 pounds (2.9 kg) of nu-trients per year, equivalent to the treated effluent from 490 people.• Sequesters 7,401 pounds of car-bon per year (83 g carbon per square meter per year), equivalent to the CO2 emissions from an auto-mobile traveling 3,860 miles (6,212 km).• Provides ecosystem services worth us$18,000 per year.

Seagrasses and ecosystemsSeagrass meadows are visible from space—astronauts can see sea-grasses. There is a vast, nearly con-tinuous seagrass meadow stretch-ing 770 miles (1,239 km) along the west and south coasts of Australia (equivalent to New York City to Jacksonville, Florida). There is a vast seagrass meadow south of the Flor-ida Everglades that is 5,380 square miles (13,934 square kilometers), equivalent in size to the state of Connecticut.

Seagrasses are key to healthy coral reefs. In the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, the seafloor is 95% seagrass and less than 5% cor-als. In the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, the seafloor is 13% seagrass and 6% coral.

Although only a few feet high, dense seagrass meadows have as much leaf area as towering rainfor-ests, which have the highest leaf areas on the planet. The leaf area index of seagrasses, tropical rain-forests and temperate rainforests can reach 20 square feet (1.8 m2) of leaf area per one square foot (0.09 m2) of ground area.

Seagrass meadows are more pro-ductive than fertilized corn fields. A productive seagrass meadow will fizz with oxygen bubbles, looking like champagne.

Seagrasses provide a nursery for ju-venile fish and a habitat to conch, lobsters, crabs, and food for turtles and other fish. They are also home to many species of seahorses. There are 10 to 100 times more animals in seagrass meadows compared with adjacent sandy bottom.

Seagrasses are the primary food source for the world’s largest ma-rine herbivores (manatees and du-gong) and are a major food source for green sea turtles. Ducks, geese, and swans eat seagrass. Seagrasses enhance the productivity of coral reef fisheries.

Seagrasses occupy only 0.1% of the seafloor, yet are responsible for 11% of the organic carbon buried in the ocean, which helps reduce greenhouse gases.

Seagrasses protect the coast by trapping and stabilizing marine sediments, raising the seafloor at

rates of 0.04 inch (1 mm) per year. They dissipate wave energy and shelter the coast from storms.

Indicators of changeSeagrass is sensitive to environ-mental changes because of its high light requirement, among the high-est of any plant in the world. Like the canaries that were used to de-tect deadly gases in the coal mines, seagrasses, nicknamed “coastal canaries,” are a valuable tool in the detection of harmful changes in the ocean.

This information was produced by the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) Global Seagrass Trajectories Working Group and the Integration and Application Net-work (IAN) at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science (www.ian.umces.edu)

Seagrasses are associated with decreased light resulting from increased nutrients which increase growth and phytoplankton and block light.

How to reach involved organisations

Adopt a conch now!! Please visit us at http://conchbonaire.org


Adopt a Conch!

Adopt a Conch!: is a nature awareness and

conservation project of

the Bon Kousa Foundation,

a registered non-profit

organisation on Bonaire.


DCNA: the Dutch Caribbean

Nature Alliance assists and

supports nature conserva-

tion activities on each of

the Islands of the Dutch

Caribbean.

www.dcnanature.org

Mangrove Center :is a research and excursion

center on Bonaire. Visitors

learn about the mangroves,

and guided kayak and solar

boat tours through the

beautiful mangrove forest

of Lac Bay are possible.

www.mangrovecenter.com

Stinapa: is dedicated to the conser-

vation of Bonaire’s natural

and historical heritage

through the sustainable

use of its resources.

www.stinapa.org

What if we change:is the story about how we

can re-green the planet.

An interactive storytelling

project.

www.whatifwechange.org

STCB:Sea Turtle Conservation

Bonaire has been protect-

ing endangered sea turtles

on Bonaire since 1991,

and has been protecting

seagrass beds at Lac since

2008.

www.bonaireturtles.org

Bon Kousa: the Bon Kousa Foundation

helps other non-profit

organisations to realize

culture & nature awareness

and conservation projects.

www.bonkousa.org

Adopt a Conch! D U T C H C A R I B B E A N N A T U R E A L L I A N C E

DCNABon Kousa Foundation

#9 Sabadeco Shores

fundashon

bon kousa

use this QR code to visit our website

Documents

Adopt a Conch! Read all about Seagrasses in Lac BayThe Conch Restoration Program is one of IUCN ‘what if we change’ projects, funded by the Dutch Postcode Lottery. The project