Seagrasses play a critical role in clear water estuaries, bays and shallow continental shelves, as well as intertidal areas in less clear areas. Found from sub arctic to tropical, they are important habitats on many continents. The habitat value for fisheries species and the complex food web dependent on them and their detritus includes many threatened and endangered marine and avifaunal species. It was logical that attempts to restore the many badly degraded bays, estuaries and continental shelf areas where seagrasses were abused over many centuries. This work began by us on large scale in Florida and is reviewed. The several hundred attempts have occurred throughout the USA since then with widely varying survival and establishment rates, although the best were a completed seagrass meadow within four months of planting as our recent work in Texas showed. The techniques by which the investigators have been employing are seeds and seedlings, turions with apical meristem and blades , whole plants, plugs with and without sediment, and sods. The genera transplanted include Halodule, Zostera, Thalassia, Syringodium, Halophila, Enhalus, Ruppia some of them several species. The various techniques used, the various conditions will be surveyed. Problems still existing are energy regimes at various sites, predation, sediment type, turbidity and light requirements, and salinity and pollution tolerances of various species. Some political problems such as planting areas of diking on barren bottoms vs. scrape down remain. The use of seedlings and turions as experimental laboratory and teaching tools has been made simple by papers on planting techniques. The study of a variety of pollutants can be carried out with fairly simple laboratory equipment even in inland laboratories.

Key words: Enhalus, Halodule, Halophila, pollution of seagrass, Ruppia, seagrass restoration, seeds, Thalassia, turions, Zostera