Scaling Eelgrass Restoration – Building Technical and Organizational Capabilities

This event focuses on technology development related to automated eelgrass planting, as well as adjacent relevant topics such as business models and regulatory requirements.

Denmark has lost approximately 90% of its historical eelgrass beds, leading to a significant loss of biodiversity and the degradation of vital coastal ecosystems. While restoration efforts exist, the current reliance on manual planting by divers is prohibitively expensive and cannot achieve the scale required for national impact.

We invite you to join DTU, AAU, SDU, KU, Rohde Nielsen and the Aage V. Jensen Naturfond for a project conference dedicated to the upscaling of marine recovery.

You should participate if you:

• are interested in technologies for working on the seabed
• are interested in business models and regulation related to nature restauration
• are interested in eelgrass

Participation is free

We are looking forward to sharing and discussing best practices and experiences on accelerating prototyping activities and sharing best practices – regarding technologies, business models and regulatory challenges.

Topics we are looking forward to address during the day are:

1. Industrializing planting technology: Moving seabed operations from manual labor to automated planting systems. This includes ROVs and specialized ship-based infrastructure designed for diverse coastal environments.
2. Navigating the Regulatory Environment: Experiences with navigating and resolving the complex legal frameworks—across national, EU, and international levels—to enable industrial-scale eelgrass restoration projects.
3. Financing & De-Risking Business Models: Developing and aligning financing mechanisms with business and operational needs to support the development of a commercial marine restoration ecosystem.
4. Strategic Outreach & Stakeholder Alignment: How can we build a “virtuous spiral” across technology developers and suppliers, in order to de-risk and accelerate the implementation of automated planting solutions?