The Saya de Malha Bank is so existentially crucial to the planet because it is one of the world’s biggest seagrass meadows and thus carbon sinks. Much like trees on land, seagrass absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it in its roots and soil. But seagrass does it especially fast—at a rate 35 times that of tropical rainforest. What makes the situation in the Saya de Malha Bank even more urgent is that it’s being systematically decimated by a multi-national fleet of fishing ships that virtually no one tracks or polices.
The most important place on earth that virtually no one has ever heard of is called the Saya de Malha Bank, which has been called the world’s largest invisible island. Situated in the Indian Ocean between Mauritius and Seychelles, more than 200 miles from land, the Bank extends over an area the size of Switzerland and is home to the world’s largest seagrass fields, which make it the planet’s most important carbon sink.
In Bohuslän, 90 percent of the eelgrass meadows that existed in the area have been lost only 40 years ago. Now they are trying to replant the meadows, but it seems more difficult than first thought
