Seagrass meadows play a vital role in the marine ecosystem health by providing biodiversity support, sediment stabilization, nutrient cycling, and wave energy attenuation. Despite increasing interest in nature-based solutions for coastal resilience, many engineering projects lack scientific grounding when claiming structures will create conditions to aid seagrass establishment and/or recovery. Additionally, relatively few studies have evaluated the impact of hydrodynamic forces on seagrass distribution and recovery and quantified the hydrodynamic parameters threshold for the same. Specifically, for the Gulf Coast where the continental shelf is broad with shallow bathymetric features and microtidal conditions, these nearshore habitats are extremely susceptible to wind driven wave circulations, current induced sediment resuspension, water depth, orbital velocity, and other environmental factors. Therefore, it is critical to understand the impacts of these dynamic processes and delineate the thresholds of hydrodynamic and wave parameters on overall long-term seagrass resilience within the Gulf of America. We will present our study which synthesizes the existing limited body of literature that demonstrates critical knowledge and methodology in identifying the specific design parameters required to provide an engineered wave energy mitigation solution to promote seagrass restoration and highlights the required future research needs to support restoration and management strategies for the vulnerable Gulf coastal ecosystems.