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Populations of eelgrass (Zostera marina L.) in the Dutch Wadden Sea have witnessed two major phases of decline this century. The first was the total disappearance of sublittoral beds during the wasting disease epidemic of the early 1930s, and their subsequent failure to recover. The second was the gradual disappearance of littoral eelgrass after the mid-1960s. It is argued here that both the lack of recovery of the sublittoral beds, and the disappearance of the littoral population, may have been effected, to a large extent, by changes in turbidity. The increasing turbidity can be linked with progressively increasing eutrophication as well as deposit extracting and dredging activities.