Meet the team restoring critically important underwater forests | Discovery | Gardening Australia

[@FerraPizza]

I love seeing these initiatives.... 👍👍👍👍👍

[@senthamarair8339]

Wow... Underwater garden.. You are making the world better. Thank you guys. Love from India.

[@suchdevelopments]

Costa you keep on keeping on. You are perfect ambassador to be show what we can do. From Lismore North Coast NSW. When will you come North.

[@Lucille269]

Amazing work. Thank you to all involved in this project, and for raising awareness.

[@qbmac2306]

The ocean is everybody's garden

[@JrodGtar]

Gardening in the ocean.... never thought about that before

[@dereksharkey274]

Bud stuff bud doin grate yeah we gonna bud yeah keep givin us d storie bud all rite bro.

[@v.mishrasart43]

Nice video👍👍

[@24_alexandr_24]

Молодцы 👍

[@tjmarx]

How do they remove the plastic mat once the crayweed is attached? Doesn't the crayweed attach over the plastic mat and thus the plastic becomes a layer between the rock and the crayweed? Or did I miss something?

[@Ifyouarehurtnointentwasapplied]

If it's got a Forest growing on top of it it can stay as long as plastic needs to be minerals again and future plants will eat the minerals ?

[@thisearththeonlyheaven]

I assume the plastic only covers small areas to seed surrounding areas of rock/reef with more plants. I guess any crayweed plants on the plastic goes with it when removed, but they could be reused again if healthy??

[@tjmarx]

For clarification on my question the plastic mat is being used to anchor all of the crayweed being planted. That is, every piece of crayweed and their offspring are growing on plastic mat because they are unable to be fixed directly to the rock once removed from their donor habitats. The claim in the video is that the plastic mat is somehow removed once the crayweed is established. I can understand that any mat without crayweed growing on it can be removed, but I'm unsure how they removed the plastic mat from between the crayweed and the rock. The problem with plastics in waterways, and why the video addresses their use specifically, is that through a mixture of tidal action, UV light and bacteria micro plastics will become part of the water column and cause further damage to wildlife in the area. Even a 1cm x 1cm square of plastic will break down into hundreds of thousands of micro plastic pieces and will be more than enough to cause significant disease in the immediate area. That's why it's interesting to hear how they're managing to remove all of the plastic from the site.

[@adrianaverges]

@@tjmarx it's a good question! we manually remove the plastic mats a couple of years after the restoration (once the craybies have completely taken off in the surrounding area. We have tried many alternative biodegradable materials (like coconut fibre, compostable 'plastic') but they don't work because they break down too quickly, as we plant this in very wave-exposed areas.

[@tjmarx]

Hi@@adrianaverges are you involved directly in the project? My question relates to the plastic mat that cray weed is growing on, as opposed to the empty pieces of mat. It seems to me physically impossible to remove the plastic mat without disrupting the cray weed. How are you removing all of the plastic, or does some of the plastic mat, that being the pieces the cray weed is planted on, remain in the ocean after the retrieval process?

[@TheFireflycam]

Plus, seaweed can be used to feed livestock, much healthier for the animals, and it minimises methane output, thus helping with the greenhouse effect. Australia should definitely be doing this for its livestock. So much more sustainable, some seaweed can grow a foot a day😀

[@AgrotisInHeart]

Sir do you know video tutorial in processing seaweed into livestock feeds?

[@naturewoman1274]

Great work guys, sexy legs Costa xx