Salt Marsh Restoration
~For more detail about the Saltmarsh restoration trial, the newly developing marine ambassador campaign, coastal squeeze and more, listen to the recording below the article.~
Later in the day we found ourselves jibing our way downwind, zigzagging up the channel that guides boats between the shallow flats of beautiful Chichester Harbour. You have to keep your eyes open and a heightened watch on your surroundings in this much used area of water, fleets of windsurfers streaming across the water in processions like leaf cutter ants, and so many other people enjoying the harbour, from motorboats to little lasers. Our destination was Itchenor, a tiny riverside village, and base of Chichester Harbour Conservancy. The conservancy have partnered with a host of other organisations, from the RSPB to Natural England, to IFCA, to form the coalition CHaPRoN, and my interviewees for this destination were Sarah Chatfield, CHaPRoN manager and Kate L’Amie, communications and engagement officer for both CHaPRoN and Solent Seascapes.
Our arrival consisted of my first ever attempt to moor Ailish, and an entertaining performance to the local yacht club. They watched in delight as Tom jumped off, tied me onto a cleat and then proceeded to try and direct me from the pontoon as the boat swung around in the wrong direction and started to pull away from my audience with the tide. So many things to consider when mooring! The direction and speed of the boat, the wind, the tide; as usual you are responding to a living environment and all of these things have to be taken into account when making your decisions.
Sarah and Kate met us at the Chichester Harbour Office, and suggested we take a walk along the harbour front to conduct our conversation in sight of the salt marsh restoration trial that is underway. The salt marsh trial has been conducted as part of the Solent Seascape project (see last blog post), and is treading entirely new ground with the innovative approach they have introduced for this undertaking.
Similar projects have been conducted before, but the innovation here lies with the invention of the ‘Dragbox’, improving the method for constructing the ground for new salt marsh habitat to develop. Sediment is dredged from local deep water channels, and usually dumped out in a particular place in the Solent, with no reason other than to move it out of the way and maintain the deep water channels. For the trial here in Itchenor, this byproduct was brought up to the intertidal shoreline, and dumped and then dragged up and down to sit at the perfect level for a salt marsh to thrive. Previously, the silt has been pumped out with a huge percentage of water, and so with a lesser ability to stay compact at the ideal level and retain structural integrity for new salt marsh to grow. The newly designed Dragbox vehicle takes the compacted silt and drags it up and down as it is, with no additional water needed.
The urgent need for salt marsh restoration is due to the coast line in the harbour depleting at a rate of two football pitches per year. The value of the salt marsh habitats are numerous, from providing nurseries for young fish before they head out into the more open waters of the harbour, to carbon capture at a rate far exceeding tropical rainforest habitats.
A few months down the line at the trial here in Itchenor, the first glasswort shoots are growing, the levels have stayed at the desired heights, and the project is surely being assessed as a success to conduct further trials.
Initiatives like CHaPRoN are forming in the face of shocking data, such as the rapid decline of coastal habitats. There is an urgency highlighted in the recent State of Nature Report, the figures showing that the UK is the most nature depleted countries in the whole world. It is daunting that we are facing such extreme facts, but the point is we are fighting, and the more partnerships that form, the more energy is excelled with new initiatives, the faster the strength of solutions will be made. As more organisations, volunteers, educators and every day persons add their voices to the choir singing to save our natural environments, the louder the song will be until we will hear it and see the results wherever we walk.
I asked Sarah what brought her to be working in the protection of Chichester Harbour, was there a particular event or reason? She spoke of her life connected to the harbour, of windsurfing, and of her children sharing this. When you grow to care for something, you want to protect it. Our challenge lies in bringing all those people who haven’t had the privilege to know a natural environment so personally, into connection with marine life, or inland, into knowing the countryside, the forests, the rivers. All of these places are in urgent need of public support so that altogether we are asking for change.