Blue Meadows
Seagrass meadows are incredibly fragile, threatened, and valuable habitats. They stabilise the sea bed acting as a line of coastal defence against erosion and flooding caused by storms, and provide a habitat for a huge number and range of marine animals. They are also an important blue carbon environment that, despite covering only 0.2% of the seabed worldwide, store 10% of the carbon in the ocean; seagrass meadows are 35x more effective at absorbing carbon than tropical rainforests.
Growing seagrass for restoration projects at Blue Meadow’s purpose built facility.
Blue Meadows is a new charitable project by the Ocean Conservation Trust with a mission to protect, regenerate and restore seagrass habitats around the UK. Their target is to protect 10% of the UK’s seagrass meadows within the next five years (circa 700 hectares) and to protect 30% by 2030 in line with the Global Ocean Alliance’s 30by30 goal protect at least 30% of the global ocean as Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and Other Effective area-based Conservation Measures (OECMs) by 2030.
Image part of Ocean Conservation Trust’s blue meadows campaign
A healthy seagrass habitat. Image from Ocean Conservation Trust’s Blue Meadows campaign
Blue Meadows have a three-phase approach to protect, restore, and regenerate seagrass meadows. Their initial primary site is Falmouth, with further locations being developed in Plymouth Sound and Torbay, and you can already see the Blue Meadows brand identity that we developed for them on yellow buoys off Gyllyngvase beach indicating an area being protected for seagrass habitat restoration.
With Leap’s love of the ocean and focus on the developing potential of blue carbon as a tool in our efforts to reduce the impacts of the climate and ecological crisis, The Ocean Conservation Trust were an easy choice as a recipient of our grant for good. We worked with them on brand strategy, naming, created their brand identity and an animation, then designed, developed and launched their website on our carbon-neutral hosting. Leap’s Managing Director Simon Thomason also used some of the time that each Leap employee is allocated annually to volunteer for environmental or social charities, to consult with Blue Meadows Project on their investor journey.
Working with the team at Leap for the launch of Blue Meadows has been an insightful and collaborative process for us here at the Ocean Conservation Trust. The team have supported and guided us through designing the look of an innovative seagrass conservation project. Their process and expertise have been invaluable for our charity.
Olly Reed, Head of Marketing and Communications, Ocean Conservation Trust
A yellow marker buoy with Blue Meadows branding indicating the location of a seagrass meadow restoration area off Castle Beach, Falmouth. Image: Ocean Conservation Trust
We’d put the word out that we were keen to work with organisations in the developing blue carbon sector, so were delighted when Ocean Conservation Trust approached us. We were able to work with the team right from the very get-go, which provided a great opportunity for our creative team to conceptualise and deliver the brand in its entirety, starting with a strategy and using that to inform every single thing that followed. It was a true clean slate. We’re excited to see the project roll out and grow from their first site in Falmouth across the southwest and beyond, to reach their ambitious and important targets.
Simon Thomason, Managing Director at Leap
Make a difference, protect a meadow.
Find out more at www.bluemeadows.org