Pierce County Receives EPA Grant to Study Eelgrass

Pierce County Planning & Public Works was awarded a $500,000 grant in March to advance eelgrass monitoring along the county’s entire marine shoreline.

The grant funding comes from the Environmental Protection Agency’s Puget Sound National Estuary Program Habitat Strategic Initiative Lead and was distributed through the Department of Natural Resources.

“The work will supply critical data as the county updates its Shoreline Master Program, which will be completed in 2029,” said Senior Planner Nicolas Reibel. “The Shoreline Master Program regulates how the shoreline is used, the type of development, and how it balances with the ecological protections. It is based on a lot of science.”

Reibel was told that the funding was secure.

Mapping eelgrass has been a goal for the county, but barriers included the cost and coordinating with the Washington State Department of Natural Resources to do the work. “The timing of this grant was perfect,” Reibel said. DNR will collect the data during June and October and again in 2026 to complete the analysis in 2027.

Eelgrass grows in underwater meadows that provide habitat for a range of organisms, including young forage fish that nourish native salmon populations. It also sequesters carbon. Because eelgrass is sensitive to human impact, its health reflects the state of ecosystems in nearshore marine areas.

The shoreline was divided into 180 sites for the project and includes the entire Key Peninsula coastline. To collect data, a DNR boat will come to the shore at high tide, then head out perpendicular to the shoreline recording a video and taking water samples at depths from one to 18 meters (about 60 feet). The boat will then move 100 meters (about 330 feet) along the shoreline and repeat the measurements. They will cover half the sites in 2025 and the other half in 2026. Reibel said the work will probably start on Carr Inlet.

The data collected will be compared to previous information where it is available. In 2003, Pentec Environmental conducted a nearshore salmon habitat analysis of the Gig Harbor, Key Peninsula, and nearby island shorelines that included eelgrass. DNR has monitored several areas on the Key Peninsula — Vaughn Bay, Joemma Beach, Pitt Passage, south of Glen Cove, and immediately north of Minter Bay to the end of the Purdy Spit — as part of their Nearshore Habitat Program.

That program covers only about 5% of the Pierce County marine shoreline, Reibel said. All the other information gathered will be new.