Possible New Grain - Grows in Saltwater!

[Broomstick]

Eelgrass "rice"

Sounds too good to be true - grows in actual saltwater, gobbles up carbon dioxide, nutritious.

[LadyTevar]

Huh. Interesting.
Didn't say how they harvest the grains, tho. Do they pull the whole thing up by the roots?

[Elheru Aran]

The yield is the catch, I suspect-- only 1/3 the yield of (I'm guessing) a similarly sized plot of rice. While that doesn't mean it's infeasible-- it does seem much easier to grow, just sow it in a patch of salt marsh and wait-- I suspect it would be much more expensive unless domesticated and bred into a more grain-bearing form.

[GuppyShark]

I'm particularly interested in this part.

"In the marine garden, León and his team were watching as the plant lived up to its reputation as an architect of ecosystems: transforming the abandoned salt marsh into a flourishing habitat teeming with life, from seahorses to scallops."

So land that was essentially dead, was restored to a more natural state and humans get something to encourage us to protect it.

[Bedlam]

I'm particularly interested in this part.

"In the marine garden, León and his team were watching as the plant lived up to its reputation as an architect of ecosystems: transforming the abandoned salt marsh into a flourishing habitat teeming with life, from seahorses to scallops."

So land that was essentially dead, was restored to a more natural state and humans get something to encourage us to protect it.

Saying it's more natural is a bit of a stretch the plan was human cultivated so either it doesn't grow naturally where it was farmed or at least it doesn't grow in the quantities it was planted. Just because there's more bio diversity doesn't make things more natural, just different to how it was.

[GuppyShark]

"In the Bay of Cádiz, the once-abundant plant had been reduced to an area of just four sq metres, echoing a decline seen around the world as seagrass meadows reel from increased human activity along coastlines and steadily rising water temperatures."

An artificial reef is still a reef. These seagrass gardens are still habitat. It's our fault they're not growing there anymore. We're just trying to fix what we broke.