An unlikely team of researchers and get this, Tiger Sharks, has discovered the world's

largest seagrass ecosystem.

It's been hiding in plain sight just off the coast of the Bahamas that results appear

in nature communications.

This is Scientific Americans Science Quickly.

I'm Joseph Polodoro.

As ecosystems go, seagrasses are right up there with rainforests and coral reefs.

But it's actually one of the most important hubs or magnets for biodiversity.

Austin Gallagher is a marine biologist and CEO of Beneath the Waves, an ocean conservation

nonprofit.

Seagrasses are nurseries to a fifth of the world's largest fisheries and are shelters for thousands

of species.

They protect other habitats and coastlines, and they store enormous amounts of carbon

that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere.

It's sort of this, you know, incredible, unsung hero of ocean conservation.

But as much as half the world's seagrass is yet to be found, we're protecting these

critical ecosystems with surveys that are as accurate as an early Renaissance map of

the New World.

That's because unlike mangroves and warm water coral reefs, seagrass meadows aren't

always picked up by satellite or airplane observation.

Cloud cover and glare from the seafloor also keep the Bahamas seagrass hidden.

So there's a lot of false negatives and a lot of false positives.

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