Sometimes nature needs a little helping hand.

Vast underwater forests have gone missing from the Sydney coastline, with repercussions for local fish, abalone, crayfish and coastal marine biodiversity.

We have a solution, but we need your help. In this initial phase we are aiming to raise over $20,000 to kick-start the restoration of Sydney's underwater forests in four sites. Underwater Christmas Trees are now sold out, but you can still help us enjoy a brighter 2016 by buying or giving an Underwater Tree and showing your appreciation for Sydney's beautiful coastline. Every card will buy an Underwater Tree and spread the word about the campaign. FOR EVERY $5,000 WE GET ABOVE OUR INITIAL GOAL WE WILL BE ABLE TO BRING CRAYWEED BACK TO YET ANOTHER SYDNEY SITE.

Seaweeds may not be the most glamorous of sea creatures, but they’re vitally important. Like trees on the land, seaweeds form vast underwater forests that provide critical food and habitat for hundreds of species, all while quietly capturing atmospheric carbon and producing precious oxygen.

‘Crayweed’ forms dense forests on shallow reefs all the way from Port Macquarie down to Tasmania. Not that long ago, crayweed also flourished along the Sydney coastline, but it disappeared completely during the 1980s - from Palm Beach all the way to Cronulla.

We think this extinction was the result of previous poor sewage practice – poor treatment and release too close to the shore – thankfully this stopped in the 1990s. Since then Sydney water quality has improved dramatically BUT the crayweed forests have never returned.

Crayweed provides food and habitat to a huge diversity of fish and invertebrates, including economically important abalone and crayfish. Other species of seaweed do not play the same role in Sydney’s marine environment. Losing crayweed is bad news for our local marine biodiversity and for any of us who love our coastline, enjoy eating seafood and diving or fishing.

The aim of OPERATION CRAYWEED is to bring crayweed back to reefs where it once flourished, and with it the marine life whose survival depends on it.

The first $20,000 will be used to fund phase 1 of restoration of new crayweed sites, including paying for boats, biodegradable mesh, and the sourcing and transport of the transplanted crayweed. 

Every $20,000 we raise allows our team to restore crayweed to 4 key sites between Palm Beach to Cronulla. We are EXTREMELY HUMBLED by the overwhelming response that our project is having, and we are now hoping that we can raise the bar and restore 6 or perhaps even 8 (!) sites by the end of this crowdfunding! This would mean reaching $40,000 by January 31st, and we are starting to think this is going to be possible!

From our base at the Sydney Institute of Marine Science and UNSW Australia, we have already developed a successful method to create crayweed forests on reefs where they were once dominant, by transplanting healthy, fertile adults from existing populations and attaching them to deforested rocks using BIODEGRADABLE mesh drilled into the bottom. There, they survive, they thrive and they start having sex – a lot of sex.

So by creating patches of transplanted crayweed onto a reef, we can, in the long term, restore forests of this essential species in an entire site. The idea here, of course, is that by restoring crayweed we’re also restoring its associated community, and thereby increasing the chances of finding crayfish, abalone and a huge diversity of other fish and invertebrates at restored sites, which is good news for snorkelers, fishers, beach goers and seafood lovers.