SAN DIEGO — The Port of San Diego has secured $150,000 from the U.S. Department of Transportation to study blue carbon sequestering in San Diego Bay.
Blue carbon is the carbon stored in coastal and marine ecosystems.
Eileen Maher is the Director of Environmental Conservation with the Port of San Diego. The funding will help look at how eel grass can improve air quality.
"To get this funding, we're super excited to get started next month," Maher said. "It will confirm how much carbon can be absorbed by eelgrass in San Diego Bay. This will set a baseline."
Carbon absorption plays a key role in the Port's climate action plan and San Diego Bay has an amazing amount of eelgrass.
"The last survey last summer we found just under 2,600 acres. That's half the eelgrass in Southern California," Maher said.
That is 20% of all the California beds - the most in 25 years.
Eelgrass grows throughout the bay.
"So, we're looking at 40 different places," she said. "It will be on Port land and Navy land."
Because San Diego Bay has so many using the waterfront for so many different reasons including tourism, recreation, housing and industry, improving air quality is extremely important.
"It's part of our toolbox to help with carbon absorption from the atmosphere. Eelgrass is very important to offset those greenhouse gases" Maher explained.
According to research, eelgrass and the soil it grows in can trap carbon from the atmosphere for thousands of years and can store 30 to 50 times that of forests.
"This does play into one aspect of our climate action plan [and] there's a lot of different tools in the toolbox for the climate action plan," she said.
Maher hopes that eelgrass can be a bigger tool to help improve the air quality.
"If it's pulling so much carbon from the atmosphere, let's go plant some more."
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