Surveying seagrass can be time intensive, weather dependent, tide dependent and can cause disruption to other wildlife and the target habitat itself. Using drones to survey seagrass can hugely improve survey capacity and so this project enabled Mossy Earth, one of our Seagrass Meadows Scotland group of projects, to buy a suitable drone and to gain the crucial training to enable safe and effective use. The result has been increased scientific data and knowledge to feed into restoration work.
The drone work has allowed Mossy Earth to scale up their ability to map larger areas of intertidal and transitional habitat. As they refine their skills this could have the additional benefit of aiding other projects in Scotland with marine and coastal restoration, mapping and monitoring.
In 2025 SMEEF was able to provide a grant of £12,700 to support this work using resources from the Nature Restoration Fund. This is a great example of where public and private funds have been blended to support nature restoration in Scotland.