As the old saying goes, “the grass is always greener…”. But soon, sea grass will be greener at St. Pete’s North Shore Park – or rather, just offshore.
Starting in late 2025, the City of St. Petersburg will be restoring 32 acres of seagrass habitat near the entrance to Coffee Pot Bayou. The restoration will begin by repairing a dredge hole just offshore using 470,000 cubic yards of fill from a recent channel deepening project at SeaPort Manatee. Over the summers of 2026 and 2027, manatee grass, turtle grass, and shoal grass plugs gathered from a donor site just to the north will be added to this new bay bottom, then monitored for growth. New marine signage around the site will inform boaters that they are entering a shallow seagrass area. The hope is to establish a thriving seagrass meadow, increasing total seagrass in coverage in the area to nearly 180 acres.
While such “mitigation bank” strategies – which offer a way to offset impacts to environmentally sensitive ecosystems caused by development activities – are common for wetlands and forests, they are relatively rare for marine and estuarine ecosystems. The North Shore Park seagrass mitigation bank will be one of the first such initiatives in Florida…