In terrestrial restoration, the use of nurseries has been highly successful and are critical to producing and providing the material for restoration programs. Similar techniques are now being applied to seagrass restoration. This approach may enable large numbers of more robust seedlings to be grown before out planting (Tanner & Parham, 2010; Ambo-Rappe & Yasir, 2015; Yang et al., 2016). For the majority of seagrass species, there are still many knowledge gaps that need to be overcome to enable large-scale cultivation, including physiological tolerances and optimal grow-out. Determining the optimal conditions to maximise seagrass seedling establishment is critical to the success of generating large amounts of material for seagrass restoration programs. We need to identify optimal conditions at the nursery that will provide the greatest growth and survival and will produce robust seedlings that can survive once transplanted into the marine environment. The findings of this nursery based research will help identify optimal conditions such as seed planting density, controlling algal growth and sediment type, for Zostera muelleri. This will make an important contribution to establishing successful restoration programs for this species in Australia and the knowledge has important implications for similar programs globally.