‘Ten more years to restore the planet’ – these words weigh heavily on me today as I walk down from the boat shed to the water’s edge, no doubt a hangover from the deep conversations of the night before. ‘There has never been a more urgent need to revive damaged ecosystems than now.’ These words echo in my head as I find myself at the water’s edge, staring out over the tranquil waters of Loch Craignish in Scotland. The enormity and immediacy of the task at hand is intimidating, and yet somehow the grandeur and tranquillity of my surroundings act as a soothing escape for a moment. I’m lost deep in thought as I watch Danny Renton manoeuvre the small Seawilding hard boat towards me. Ripples run out in waves from the squat bow as he nudges the outboard over, steering towards us.

It’s a September morning, and in Argyll this means that the dawn air is much cooler now. Summer, it seems, has long gone. The leaves are showing their age, the first real signs of autumn are already showing. I wade out to meet the boat, scrambling over the rocky shoreline to find myself standing to one side of a verdant green seagrass meadow. Sunlight breaks through a gap in the clouds, the warmth of the sun on my face is most welcome. Perhaps summer is not over just yet as the sun glitters across the surface.

The loch’s water is relatively warm at this time of year, a legacy of the summer that does persist long after the seasons end, and the seagrass meadows here are teeming with life; just below the surface a school of juvenile Atlantic Herring school past me, their scales glinting in the light. But my trance is broken as the herring suddenly dart away as Danny arrives with our transport.

I hope we get to see them during filming later, I think to myself, or perhaps capture them on our camera traps. Lucy Coals and Bethan Thomas, my colleagues from Project Seagrass are nearby setting up a new remote underwater camera system using a smartphone app. They want to deploy the system for five days. Using the app, they will program the camera to switch on and start filming for 60 minutes each morning and evening. In total, they want to record ten hours of footage, to get a snapshot of the abundance and diversity of species that are using this seagrass meadow as a habitat at this time of year.