To halt the decline of a vital ocean ecosystem, volunteer divers armed with hammers worked tirelessly for countless hours.
The Guardian reported that the kelp forest off the coast of Rancho Palos Verdes, Los Angeles, was in dire straits. Approximately 80% of the forest had been lost due to disruptions to the ecosystem. After hours of painstaking work by the divers of the Bay Foundation, the kelp forest has enjoyed a dramatic comeback.
Tom Ford, Chief Executive Officer of the Bay Foundation, described seeing the forest for the first time. “It looked like a cathedral, with light shooting through the stained glass … like flying through an unimaginably dense forest of life.”
It’s difficult to overstate the importance of kelp forests. They provide a habitat for hundreds of marine species, and they punch well above their weight when it comes to sequestering carbon. Kelp forests absorb carbon twenty times more efficiently than land forests. Though they only cover about 0.1% of the ocean floor, they are responsible for 3% of the carbon trapped by the ocean, according to the Smithsonian.
The cause of the forest’s decline is a poignant lesson into the devastating consequences that come from removing just one or two species from an ecosystem. The kelp was being devoured at a ruinous rate because of an explosion in the urchin population.
As NOAA put it, sea otters and kelp forests “go together like peanut butter and jelly!” Otters control the urchin population, but they were hunted to near extinction. Sea stars, which also snack on urchins, were wiped out by disease. Add warming ocean temperatures and run-off from a chemical plant, and you’ve got a recipe for kelp disaster.
That’s where the Bay Foundation came in. Divers diligently hammered away at the overly abundant urchins for over 15,000 hours. The work was difficult and repetitive, but it soon paid off. Kelp grows extremely quickly, up to two feet a day, so once the urchins were out of the picture, the forests recovered rapidly.
A prime example of the power of acting locally, the work provides a blueprint for reviving the kelp forests of other nations.
Nature just needs a helping hand, or in this case, a hammer. As one of the divers pointed out, the results came incredibly quickly: “I’ve never seen a kelp forest that dense — and it was insane to see how quickly it returned.”
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