Feasibility of Surfgrass Phyllospadix iwatensis Transplantation Along the Rocky Coasts of Shandong Peninsula, China

Surfgrass Phyllospadix iwatensis is a dominant seagrass species along the east coast of Shandong Peninsula, China. Like other seagrasses in the world, surfgrass has been declining in the past decades. To assess the possibility of transplanting P. iwatensis in the coastal area, a new surfgrass transplant system was designed and applied to conduct a surfgrass transplantation experiment in a tide pool and a subtidal area, and its survival, morphological and physiological parameters were examined from May 2019 to June 2020. The results showed that after a year since transplantation, more than 65% of the transplants survived and the survival rate was higher in the subtidal site than in the tide pool. The morphological measurements including shoot height, leaf width, number of leaves per shoot, rhizome diameter and elongation rate, and number of roots per shoot were all higher in the subtidal area than in the tide pool, showing that the P. iwatensis transplants grew better in the subtidal area than in the tide pool in the study area. These results indicated that surfgrass can be transplanted in the two areas, and it is probably more suitable in subtidal area than in tide pool in the study area.