Bid to revive eelgrass population slowly makes headway in region

Some are skeptical of all the attention for an obscure, submerged plant. But advocates say restoring the eelgrass would profoundly improve the local ecology and even the commercial fishery.

Eelgrass is actually a flowering plant that produces leaves that look like long grass blades and lives in waters where adequate sunlight can reach it.

The plant was so common that it was often considered a nuisance. In the early 20th century, it was stuffed into walls as a lightweight insulation and wrapped around ice to keep it from melting during train transport. The thick beds of vegetation also acted as a natural defense during rough weather, helping quiet the waters pounding the shoreline, said Jon Kachmar of The Nature Conservancy, an environmental group leading eelgrass restoration efforts.

But eelgrass was devastated by a parasitic slime mold that remains common to the plant. For unknown reasons, the mold suddenly and ferociously attacked the plants.

“It a natural balance that somehow got out of balance,’’ said Fred Short, a University of New Hampshire professor who is leading genetic studies related to eelgrass restoration.

Most of the damage from the disease was done in the early 1930s, when it quickly spread through leaf-to-leaf contact. The disease wound down in the 1940s, with remaining eelgrass surviving then, as today, in smaller and scattered patches.

In the following decades, the loss of the eelgrass beds was felt all over, scientists say.

For instance, a snail called a limpet that fed on organisms that grew on the grass went extinct.

And commercially valuable bay scallops, which attached to eelgrass blades as juveniles so they could feed and grow up and away from predators, have recently struggled badly, and the disappearance of eelgrass is considered a factor.