Seagrasses can improve water quality of sea by suppressing pollution

Image credit: Joleah Lamb

New Delhi: Underwater flowering plants and seagrass meadows have long been known to have anti-microbial properties.

Now, a new research suggests that seagrasses produce natural antibiotics that can help improve the water quality of sea by suppressing pollution.

According to researchers, seagrass meadows reduce bacteria pathogenic to humans and marine life by up to 50 percent.

"The seagrass appear to combat bacteria, and this is the first research to assess whether that coastal ecosystem can alleviate disease associated with marine organisms," said lead author Joleah Lamb of Cornell University's Atkinson Center for a Sustainable Future, where she is a Nature Conservancy NatureNet fellow.

They found that with the presence of seagrass, the bacteria Enterococcus - harmful for humans - reduced three-fold.

The findings highlight the importance of seagrasses to the health of coastal ecosystems - humans and other organisms.

It not only could they help with improving water quality in ever more populated coastal zones, they also play a key role in sustaining the rapid increase of aquaculture in the face of global food shortages.

Plants, with their natural biocides, play a vital role - one that can offer significant economic benefits.

The researchers worked in waters off four Indonesian islands, to assess the influence of seagrass on marine microbial pathogens and disease - an effort in part inspired by many of their team first falling ill in this location.

In shorewaters, they found the presence of the bacteria Enterococcus to exceed the US EPA recommended human health risk exposure level by 10-fold.

Levels of Enterococcus were reduced three-fold, however, in the presence of seagrass.

Further studies revealed that the abundance of several marine fish and invertebrate pathogens was also lower when seagrass was present - by 50 percent.

Further researchers revealed that over 8,000 reef-building corals adjacent to seagrass meadows showed two-fold reductions in disease compared to corals without seagrass neighborurs.

The new findings have been published in the Journal of Science.

(With ANI inputs)