Situated in the Indian Ocean between Mauritius and Seychelles, more than 200 miles from land, the Saya de Malha Bank extends over an area the size of Switzerland and is one of the world’s biggest seagrass meadows, which make it the planet’s most important carbon sink. Much like trees on land, seagrass absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and stores it in its roots and soil. But seagrass does it especially fast – at a rate 35 times that of tropical rainforest.
As such, it is existentially crucial to the planet. Due to its remote location, the bank is among the least-studied, shallow marine ecoregions on the planet – and, tragically, the area is today being systematically decimated by a multi-national fleet of fishing ships that virtually no one tracks or polices.