Seagrass of Southeast Asia: Challenges, Prospects, and Management Strategies

This review reveals the constraints and potential management options for improving the seagrass ecosystem. Southeast Asia is a global hotspot for seagrass biodiversity and its variety, providing essential ecosystem services such as nutrient cycling, organic matter export, feeding and breeding ground for shell and finfish, sediment trapping, etc. However, aside from taxonomy and systematics, dietary and feeding, its ecosystem function and importance were insufficiently explored throughout Southeast Asia. Data from Vietnam, Cambodia, Singapore, Timor-Leste, and Southern China offer comprehensive coverage on the distribution of seagrasses throughout their coastlines but, for the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, and Thailand, substantial gaps are present for seagrass distribution. Meanwhile, for Brunei Darussalam, the Paracel Islands, the Spratly Islands, Pratas Islands, Kalimantan, Central and Southeast Sulawesi, the Maluku Islands, and West Papua, the population dynamics and spatial-temporal information remain poorly explored. Seagrass meadows cover 36,762.6 km2 in Southeast Asia; however, this estimate is likely to be an underestimate because of several ecoregions were underrepresented, and current data was insufficient. A number of natural and anthropogenic threats are posed to the Southeast Asian seagrass ecosystems causing decline of seagrass meadows. Number of measures can be implemented to increase seagrass conservation in Asia, particularly in the Southeast Asian region. It entails: (1) encouraging regional collaboration at the institutional level and capacity building and sharing knowledge; (2) engaging policymakers and government agencies to adopt science-based policies; (3) adopting standardised protocol to determine the distribution range and species availability in different localities to minimise knowledge gap, so as to find the threat appropriately; and (4) engaging with communities to raise awareness and foster seagrass stewardship in the region.