Objective 3: Restoring Seagrass in Roches Noires
In 2025, our project carried out the first seagrass restoration trial in Mauritius, focusing on the lagoon at Roches Noires in the northeast. The project aim to develop a best practise by utlising various planting techniques.
What we did
Working with international experts and trained field teams, we:
-
Collected healthy seagrass shoots and plugs with their roots and/or sediments from stable donor areas.
-
Transplanted these into carefully selected plots in bare areas of Roches Noires lagoon.
-
Used structured planting patterns to maximise shoot survival and encourage natural spread.
Why Roches Noires?
This lagoon is home to fishing, tourism, and coastal communities who depend on healthy ecosystems for livelihoods. Restoring seagrasses here provides an important test case for how nature-based solutions can restore ecosystem fucntions and services, and simultaniously improve water clarity, while supporting biodiversity and fisheries.
Looking ahead
The Roches Noires restoration will help us to generate valuable lessons about:
-
Which techniques are most effective under local conditions.
-
How quickly transplanted seagrasses can recover and spread.
-
What monitoring tools are needed to track success over the coming years.
This work marks a milestone for Mauritius: it is the first hands-on demonstration that seagrass meadows can be actively restored to strengthen coastal resilience. The knowledge gained in Roches Noires will guide larger-scale restoration efforts in other lagoons in the future.