The find increases known seagrasses globally by one third.

这一发现使全球已知海草的面积增加了三分之一。

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

作为生态系统，海草与热带雨林和珊瑚礁齐名。

Mapping seagrasses not only helps us protect them; it may also benefit the people who live near them.

绘制海草地图不仅可以保护它们；还可能使在附近生活的人们受益。

And we are now growing policies to protect seagrasses and improve water quality so that we can recover seagrasses.

我们现在正在制定保护海草和改善水质的政策，以便我们能够恢复海草。

They are no ordinary seagrasses, and yet, we didn't know much about them.

它们不是普通的海草，然而，我们对它们知之甚少。

Marine meadows are made of seagrasses, a group of angiosperms, or flowering plants, that are completely aquatic.

海洋草甸由海草、一组被子植物或开花植物组成，它们完全是水生的。

As the water clarity improves, seagrasses start to grow, fish return, and other sea creatures make the crevices in the reef their home.

随着海水清澈度的提高，海草回开始生长，鱼会游回来，其他海洋生物会把牡蛎礁石的缝隙当作自己的家。

Now seagrasses are starting to expand and recover along the shores of Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and China.

现在，海草开始在欧洲、北美、日本、澳大利亚和中国的海岸扩张和恢复。

So very often, seagrasses form the first line of defense for the shorelines.

因此，海草常常构成海岸线的第一道防线。

Mangroves and seagrasses trap carbon between their roots, and fast-growing kelps export vast amounts of carbon to the deep ocean.

红树林和海草在根部吸收碳，快速生长的海带向深海输出大量碳。

And over the last two decades, we have seen a rebound of seagrasses following almost a century of sustained decline.

在过去的二十年里，我们看到海草在经历了近一个世纪的持续衰退后出现了反弹。

But seagrasses are more than just carbon.

但海草不仅仅是碳。

Well, we know that coastal ocean ecosystems like mangroves or seagrasses or salt marshes are some of the most effective carbon sinks on the planet.

嗯，我们都知道近海生态系统，如：红树林、海草以及盐碱滩，是地球上最高效的净碳槽之一。

And this is only the beginning, because we can do more than just protect seagrasses and wait for them to come back.

而这仅仅是开始，因为我们可以做的不仅仅是保护海草并等待它们回归。

But we can only protect what we know, and our knowledge of the distribution and area of seagrasses in the ocean is still very poor.

但我们只能保护我们所知道的，而我们对海洋中海草的分布和面积的了解还很贫乏。

And in the early years of this century, they released 7.5 million seeds of seagrasses in South Bay, in the coastal waters of Virginia.

在本世纪初，他们在弗吉尼亚州沿海水域的南湾投放了 750 万颗海草种子。

Thanks to their planting of eelgrass seeds over the marshy land, the once-barren ecosystem is now flourishing, and the seagrasses are storing a ton of carbon in their root systems to boot.

由于他们在沼泽土地上种植了大叶藻种子，曾经贫瘠的生态系统现在变得繁荣起来，海草在根系中储存了大量的碳。

And these particles in the seafloor decompose very slowly, because the seafloor and the soils of seagrasses are devoid of oxygen, and that slows down microbial decomposition.

而海底的这些颗粒分解得非常缓慢，因为海底和海草的土壤缺氧， 微生物分解的速度就会减慢。

Now we know that seagrasses are beautiful swans -- which actually eat seagrass leaves and rhizomes -- and healthy seagrass meadows are harbingers of a healthy ocean.

现在我们知道海草是美丽的天鹅——它们实际上吃海草的叶子和根茎——而健康的海草草甸是健康海洋的预兆。