Earlier this week, a group of expeditioners set out on a multiday adventure around Casco Bay — not just for fun but as part of a learning journey. This journey isn’t for traditional students either, but instead, is for a group of professionals interested in learning more about the bay. Rather than learn in the classroom, they’re learning while kayaking and biking. This adventure is known as a Bioregional Learning Journey, and is organized by COBALT (Collaborative for Bioregional Action Learning & Transformation), a nonprofit Maine-based group that works with a global network of partners to develop pathways for a more just, equitable and regenerative future on our planet in the face of massive social and ecological change.

COBALT has put together Bioregional Learning Journeys throughout the world in places like Scotland, Iceland and Costa Rica. The term “bioregioning” refers to a region’s interconnected systems like food, energy, water, waste, tourism, education, health care and transportation. The idea of these journeys is to gather people with different perspectives across disciplines including artists, nonprofits, academics and community leaders to address the challenging issues of coastal resilience and adaptation and build collective capacity to respond to those challenges. By providing a shared experience, the hope is to foster new relationships and shared values going forward. As someone who has led numerous outdoor trips for a variety of age groups, I can confirm that a shared experience in the outdoors is a golden ticket to bonding.

This Casco Bay excursion is the second of its kind to grow out of a local initiative called “Team Zostera.” This group has been leading community-based seagrass restoration efforts around the bay since 2021 and hosted a learning excursion in the bay in 2022. The mission of “Team Zoostera” is to lead a citizen science effort to map and document the health of eelgrass (Zostera marina) meadows in Casco Bay. Eelgrass looks like what you would imagine. Much like the green grass on our lawns, eelgrass grows in lovely stretches called meadows, but these are underneath saltwater. Because it is a true plant, unlike marine seaweeds, it must grow in places where it can root into the substrate and also reach up to the sunlight — hence it is limited to the shallow subtidal waters along the coast. I could write a whole column about the significance of eelgrass, but to name a few critical functions, it helps provide oxygen, serves as important habitat and improves water clarity by stabilizing sediment. Sadly, more than 50% of the eelgrass native to Casco Bay has disappeared over recent years, according to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. A number of factors have contributed to this, including warming water temperatures, increased nutrients from runoff and the impacts of invasive green crabs who snip off the tops of the grasses and eat them.

In order to address the issue, Team Zostera has convened partners from nonprofits like Friends of Casco Bay as well as academic institutions like Bowdoin College. For that reason, the midpoint of this weekend’s Casco Bay journey will be Bowdoin’s Schiller Coastal Studies Center on Orr’s Island. Participants will arrive there by kayak on Saturday evening and spend the night there before processing more than 30,000 eelgrass seeds the next morning. As many other flowering plants do, eelgrass also goes to seed in the fall. These seeds can be collected and used in restoration projects, which is exactly the destination of those collected as a part of this effort. Participants will utilize the SCSC lab with the help of Bowdoin staff and students. It’s an exciting opportunity to take a positive action step forward in improving the health of the bay.

Following the visit to Orr’s Island, the expeditioners will bike back across the bay, ending up in Portland, where they began. Following the experience, they will share their stories and takeaways through the COBALT network as well as their own in hopes of creating new avenues to respond to the changes in the health of the bay.

Susan Olcott is the director of strategic partnerships at Maine Coast Fishermen’s Association.