Kelp Help
Diving into Restoration
By Colleen Wisniewski, Marine Biologist, San Diego Baykeeper &
Tom Ford, Kelp Project Director, Santa Monica Baykeeper
Scuba diving in giant kelp is often compared to flying. Imagine soaring through the oaks and maples of New England, gliding slowly through the trees and branches, meeting eye to eye with a wild turkey on the wing. This is precisely the feeling of plunging below the ocean surface and streaming through kelp looking at the perch, gathered in schools, hiding from the sea bass and barracuda only meters away.

Up and down the Southern California coast you’ll find wetsuit-clad scuba divers emerging from the sea, chatting about encounters with sea lions, lobsters, giant sea bass, garibaldi and sea slugs. All these animals and hundreds more, reside in and depend upon our local kelp forests – brown algae that grow in clear and nutrient rich ocean waters. The health of our majestic forests of the sea, however, are threatened by unchecked sewage outfalls, urban and coastal development, the effects of recreational and commercial fishing, the extinction of the southern sea otter and El Niño.

In 2000, several of the southern California Waterkeeper programs got together to form the California Coastkeeper Alliance to coordinate their kelp restoration efforts. The program is supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) through their community-based restoration program. But the volunteers are the key to the program’s success.

Volunteer divers, recruited from the local diving community, are involved in every aspect of the program. Planting new kelp forests requires many different types of complicated dives. Divers collect data at potential sites, construct and evaluate sites, perform restoration activities and monitor the progress of restored sites. California Coastkeeper Alliance biologists train volunteer divers in species identification, data collection methods and kelp forest ecology. Because diver safety is paramount, the Coastkeeper Alliance joined the American Academy of Underwater Scientists and created an intensive diver safety program.

Volunteers’ diving backgrounds vary from recreational divers, to diving professionals, scientists and students. Despite their diverse backgrounds, the volunteers share a strong desire to actively protect the marine environment, often because they have personally witnessed a decline in ocean health, shrinking kelp beds and decreasing animal stocks over recent years.

During the first three years of the project, 582 dive trips were completed and volunteers assisted on nearly every dive. Nearly 200 volunteers donated more than 5,600 hours of underwater service to the project, restoring thousands of square meters of giant kelp to provide food and shelter for millions of organisms.

Kelp Ed
Even when California Coastkeeper Alliance staff and volunteers are not flying through the cold, clear shallow coastal waters, their restoration activities go on. On dry land, the Coastkeeper Alliance members strive to preserve the giant kelp forests through legal and educational efforts.

Coastkeeper Alliance is working to ensure that regulations take into account the impacts of bacteria, trash and metals on the health of the kelp forests and limit this pollution accordingly. Another threat is a boom in the sea urchin population, an animal that grazes on the kelp. The urchin population is booming because their predators – fish such as the California sheephead and lobsters – are being over-fished. The Coastkeeper Alliance is working with the California Department of Fish and Game to revise the size limits of fish and lobster, to ensure stable populations that will control the urchins and maintain the kelp forests.

Coastkeeper Alliance also has an active education program using a combination of hands-on classroom lessons, portable marine aquaria for kelp cultivation and field trips. Students learn kelp cultivation techniques and grow kelp for eventual planting into restoration areas. Coastkeeper Alliance then coordinates field trips to help students make the direct connection of their work to the fragile kelp forest environment.

The Kelp Education Program has worked in 41 different schools and educational facilities. The program has reached almost 7,000 schoolchildren in 108 classrooms, focusing particularly on underserved and diverse school districts.

Each component of Coastkeeper Alliance’s kelp restoration program – underwater restoration, policy change and education – relies on the success of the others. And there is much evidence to believe this approach is working. Where no kelp existed beneath the waves only 10 months ago, the California Coastkeeper Alliance and our volunteers have reestablished giant kelp forests that are full of life. With stronger laws and enforcement, and a growing appreciation of these giant underwater algae, we can preserve the long-term health of these forests of the sea.