China's first national standard for seagrass bed ecosystem restoration technology, "Technical Guideline for Marine Ecological Restoration Part 4: Ecological restoration of seagrass bed" was approved for release and will be officially implemented from December 1, 2023.

This guideline was proposed by the Ministry of Natural Resources of the People's Republic of China and led by the Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, which stipulates the basic principles, analysis and diagnosis, and program implementation and other technical requirements for seagrass bed ecological restoration.

Seagrass is the only higher angiosperm that can live completely in seawater on earth. In the past few years, seagrass beds—a vital foraging ground for many species residing in the coral reefs—along the bay have degenerated into barren "deserts" due to human activity.

Seagrasses are widespread in shallow waters in all continents except Antarctica. They can form dense seagrass beds like undersea meadows, some of them can even be seen from space. They evolved around 100 million years ago, and there are about 74 different seagrass species in the world, with 22 of them recorded in China. In China, seagrasses are mainly distributed in the South China Sea, the Yellow Sea and Bohai Sea, and the East China Sea.

According to statistics, since 1990, global seagrass beds are decreasing at an annual rate of 7 percent, and about 29 percent of seagrass beds have disappeared. Seagrass beds in China have also been seriously damaged, and more than 80 percent of them have been completely degraded. Therefore, speeding up their ecological restoration has become one of the urgent problems to be solved in China's marine environmental protection. (CGTN)