Tampa Bay loses 6,350 acres of seagrass over past two years

The numbers provided to the Hillsborough Environmental Protection Commission are worse than estimates in April.

The amount of healthy seagrass in Tampa Bay is lower than previously estimated.

Thursday, a Southwest Florida Water Management District official said Tampa Bay had seen a 16 percent decline in seagrass, or more than 6,350 acres, over two years ending in 2020. That’s higher than estimates released in April that measured a 13 percent drop.

“That sends up an alarm that something is going on that we need to pay attention to,” said Chris Anastasiou, chief scientist of the water district’s surface water improvement and management program.

His comments came Thursday during a presentation to the Hillsborough County commissioners sitting as the Environmental Protection Commission.

The numbers released in April were provisional, Susanna Martinez Tarokh, a spokeswoman for the water management district, told the Times. The amount of lost seagrass was revised upward after field verification work in Old Tampa Bay and Hillsborough Bay, she said.

The final mapping data showed seagrass acres declined from 40,651 in 2018 to 34,298 in 2020 according to measurements taken from the Manatee River north to Old Tampa Bay.