How Much of the Ocean's Carbon Is in Seagrass?

Will O'Brien says seagrass covers 2% of the seafloor and holds 20% of the ocean's carbon. The ocean is the world's largest natural carbon sink, and about 20% of commercially important fish stocks rely on seagrass as habitat. Seagrass is the unsung hero in his account: a flashier plant gets the funding and the attention, while seagrass gets almost none.

Seagrass grows along the coastlines of Ireland, the UK, California, the East Coast, and Australia. The same species grows in Ireland and California. Restoration projects are underway in Virginia, southern Florida, Sausalito in California, and the Great Barrier Reef.

Ulysses started by restoring seagrass and still runs those projects, even though most of the focus is now the robot. The restoration technology is already built, so new contracts need no new research and development. The underlying IP is in place, and scaling is an operations problem: enough operators to go into the field and run the work.