Serendipity: Help With Kelp
The “ewww” factor notwithstanding, it is one of Earth's ecological treasures that's worth cherishing.
If you grew up near beaches and brothers, you may not have good associations with seaweed. My memory could be faulty, but it seems like my brother would wait until I was resting my bikini-clad body on a towel in the sand when he’d heave a great mound of the sandy slime on my back. It was giant kelp, an ecosystem with crawly bugs and oozing tubers. So how can I now write lovingly of my brother and kelp?
Since 2000, UCSB has housed the 24th site in the Long Term Ecological Research program established by the National Science Foundation in 1980. The Santa Barbara LTER’s primary research objective is “to investigate the relative importance of land and ocean processes in structuring giant kelp forest ecosystems.”
Why focus on kelp? In taking an Earth-wide view of ecosystem health, researchers saw a gap in understanding between coastal watersheds and near-shore marine environments. They determined that studying kelp systems could help bridge this gap.
More than a dozen LTER studies are in progress; other spinoffs involve commercial and nonprofit organizations. To cite one, you may have noticed that we no longer clear the beaches of kelp. Sanitized beaches may look pretty, but now we know that they are as healthy as a digestive tract stripped of healthy microbes and enzymes.
Short-term studies already have shown positive results, including some in the area of social-ecological interactions. For instance, how can we continue economically and socially important activities such as fishing and kelp harvesting without negatively affecting the sustainability of giant kelp forests?
To answer this question, the Nature Conservancy teamed with UC Santa Cruz to lease 1,700 acres of kelp forest. The third partner was The Abalone Farm Inc., one node in the history of aquaculture farmers who have harvested kelp since the 1930s. Kelp provides algin, a thickening agent used in foods and cosmetics. Now, aquaculture farmers harvest 20 tons of kelp every other day to feed mollusks such as abalone.
After three years of experimentation, researchers showed that relatively minor changes could make a big difference. Harvesting half the amount of kelp from twice as many areas of forests allowed displaced species to relocate, preserving the health of the whole ecosystem.
If we can manage to keep the ocean healthy and harvest sustainably, there may be enough seaweed-wrapped sushi for everyone and their brother.
Karen Telleen-Lawton’s column is a mélange of observations supporting sustainability. Graze her writing and excerpts from Canyon Voices: the Nature of Rattlesnake Canyon at www.canyonvoices.com.
» wrote on 09/20/08 @ 10:26 AM
Good on ya for illuminating the importance of kelp to nearshore ecosystems, and the fact that coastal cities, operating in their anal-retentive fashions, have long raked beaches clean of their basis of nutritive health. If Santa Barbara has indeed stopped this behavior, it is a step forward since the practice was but one more bit of hypocracy for the city that unjustly claims to be “the birthplace of environmentalism.”
It’s about time that humans understand that beached kelp gets macerated by moving sand, creating the food for a host of micro-organizms within the grains, upon which feed larger amphipod crustaceans, upon which feed all the lovely sanderlings and sandpipers that dance along the shore with the ebb and flow of tide and wave. A healthy beach is rife with “sand fleas” and kelp flies - if humans are going to share the beach with them, they need to get used to their presence. If people want a sanitized environment, they should go to a tanning salon or a shopping mall.
[By the way, it’s not “to site” a study, but “to cite a study"]
Thanks for the article…
» wrote on 09/23/08 @ 04:55 AM
I do love my cosmetics and sushi… Let’s figure out how to make them last a lifetime!