Sweet spots in the sea: Mountains of sugar under seagrass meadows
on Sciencedaily.com
„Seagrasses … are one of the most efficient sinks of carbon dioxide on Earth. A team of scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, (Germany) now reports in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution that seagrasses release large amounts of sugar, largely in the form of sucrose, into their soils…The scientists found that seagrasses excrete phenolic compounds, and these deter most microorganisms from degrading the sucrose. This ensures that the sucrose remains buried underneath the meadows and cannot be converted into CO2 and returned to the ocean and atmosphere.“