Point Of Discovery

Seagrasses are more efficient at storing carbon in the soil or sediment, acre for acre, than a tropical rainforest. That could make them a powerful tool for slowing the rapid rise of atmospheric CO2. The ability to quantify how much carbon a specific seagrass bed stores over time could help governments, businesses and environmental groups better manage these natural carbon sinks. Ken Dunton, a marine biology professor and Preston Wilson, an engineering professor may have found one weird trick to measuring carbon storage in seagrass beds: listening to the sound of tiny bubbles.With current technologies, being able to accurately measure how much carbon a seagrass bed stores from year to year takes a lot of time, people and money. It requires going out and physically digging up plants and sediments and bringing them back to the lab and spending days analyzing them—and doing this repeatedly over time. The new method Dunton and Wilson are developing relies on a simple idea: As seagrasses turn sunlight into energy,