Our kelp forests are largely unobserved, but now they are vanishing. To understand why, scientists dive underwater and look down from space. Their research reveals a complex system at risk of collapse. Watch the full video:
I started initially studying terrestrial ecology, but I stumbled into a scuba diving class where I learned to dive right here along the Monterey breakwater wall. It was a really rough day. The surf was big. We barely made it into the water. And I mean, we couldn't even hardly see our hands in front of our faces because it was so murky. It's freezing cold. And I just thought it was the coolest thing. I was like, it can't get better than this.
My name is Pete Raimondi. I'm a professor at UC Santa Cruz in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. My primary interest is in kelp forests along the coast of California and rocky intertidal areas, which we think of as tidepools.Back when we were driving this area, 2012, 2013, the kelp was so thick that we'd have to anchor the boat way out here and then swim under the canopy to get to the location where we were going to do our surveys.
And the other was this warm equatorial water that came up that was from a major El Nino event. And so this major marine heat wave just completely bathed all of central and northern California. And this really warm water and kelp needs really cold, nutrient rich water to thrive.And so the combination of lots and lots of sea urchins and very bad environmental conditions for kelp caused the kelp forests to collapse.We're really hoping to learn more about sea urchin behavior.
These are the the major grazers that are eating all of the kelp. So these urchins, again, they emerged from crevices and they were no longer eating drift and they started eating live kelp. So in the lab, we're looking to see what actually causes that behavioral shift. How do predators play a part in that?
We're in a pretty fortunate situation, to be completely honest, because I think that unlike a lot of environments, people actually are very interested in this. This interest has led to an immense amount of information that we would not have had. So like in the sea star wasting, probably 90 percent of the information that was from people, citizens, and that's because they're interested and they care.It's hard to speculate about what might happen.
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