Restoration robot supports seagrass sustainability
Beneath the calm, cold waters surrounding Washington’s San Juan Islands, Indigenous communities are employing innovative technology to restore one of the area’s most important—and threatened—marine ecosystems.
Ancient roots, new threats
For countless generations, eelgrass (Zostera marina) has played an indispensable role in the ecology and Indigenous cultures of the Pacific Northwest. These seagrass plants, which grow in the shallow waters along the shorelines of the Salish Sea and its islands, are foundational for the local food web. Known in the Northern Straits Salish language as chálem (čaləm), they serve as an important habitat and food source for Dungeness crabs, Pacific Herring, Chinook Salmon and other species that have sustained the region’s inhabitants for eons—and continue to support the local economy today.
Unfortunately, a warming ocean, pollution, outbreaks of seagrass wasting disease, the impacts of recreational boating, and coastal development have put these once-thriving underwater meadows in peril. Scientists have observed alarming losses of seagrass cover in several key areas in the Salish Sea, with more than half of sites surveyed in a recent study showing eelgrass loss.
All hands on deck
Since 2020, Seacology has been supporting a team of scientists and students from the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Labs to restore degraded eelgrass meadows in the San Juan Islands. As part of this ongoing partnership, recent projects at Sucia Island and Picnic Cove have brought young members of the local Lummi, Samish, Tulalip, and Yakima tribes into the partnership, both to involve them directly in restoration work and to promote education about seagrass. Together with the Coast Salish Youth Coalition, which works to preserve the region’s indigenous knowledge and culture to support environmental stewardship, the collaboration invites stakeholders from across the San Juans to join in this urgently needed work.
A young member of the Coast Salish Youth Coalition visits the university's seagrass lab.
Eelgrass supports several culturally and economically significant species, including Chinook salmon.
Seagrass restoration is still a relatively new field, and the FHL team has employed several techniques to ascertain what works best in the Salish Sea. These include manually planting shoots and injecting seeds into the mud on shorelines, and filling small burlap sacks with seeds to weigh them down long enough to get established on the seafloor. While these methods have shown promising results, they are also slow and labor-intensive. Planting seagrass in the deeper parts of its range by hand has been particularly challenging, requiring specialized dive training and favorable water conditions.
A potential game-changer
Here’s where Reefgen comes in. This San Francisco-based technology company has developed innovative robots to assist with marine habitat restoration and deployed them in several countries around the world. Reefgen’s flagship product is the Grasshopper, a smallish, remote-controlled submersible that can quickly glide along the seafloor and inject shoots and fertile seeds into the substrate with minimal disruption of the surrounding environment. The Grasshopper can plant seeds roughly 10 times faster than a human diver, making possible the restoration of larger areas.
Throughout 2025, the team carried out the first of several Seacology-funded plantings planned for Decatur, Sucia, and Shaw Islands. The partnership began with a traditional ceremony at Shaw Island’s Picnic Cove, with Lummi songs and prayers celebrating the return of seeds—which had been harvested from these waters and germinated at FHL—to their place of origin.
In October, the team utilized the Grasshopper for the first time. A group of excited kids from the Coast Salish Youth Coalition gathered on the Friday Harbor Labs dock to watch as the robot descended into the murky water to demonstrate the process. Over the next two days, the Grasshopper planted hundreds of seeds in Picnic Cove, and the team is closely monitoring their progress as they develop. Their findings will inform the next stage of the project as the team prepares to expand the planting to Sucia and Decatur Islands.
Local kids watch as the Grasshopper is tested on the shore of San Juan Island.
The team brings the robot to the first restoration site at Picnic Cove.
Looking to the past for a better future
For Latacha Johnson, a student and project leader, incorporating the traditional knowledge of eelgrass into this work is not only exciting from a conservation perspective, but deeply meaningful as a member of the Lummi nation.
“Understanding the historical relationship my people have had with chálem restores a spiritual balance between people and plants,” she writes in her capstone project at Northwest Indian College, which uses the Picnic Cove replanting as a case study. “This holistic approach of weaving traditional ecological knowledge with Western science is important to restoring chálem and their ecosystems.”
Check out the Grasshopper in action in the video below!