I have a rare opportunity to bring my community an opportunity to help the kelp. I’ll include a link below and the request from the state is for community help with monitoring kelp health and reporting on what we see.

For the past two years or so I have been serving on California’s Kelp Restoration and Management Plan (KRMP) Community Working Group (CWG).

We have been doing a deep dive into the issues of kelp restoration and management, with the goal of bringing our lush kelp forests back and maintaining them into the future.

This is a big task, and the Community Working Group consists of knowledgeable people including scientists, researchers, tribal leaders, kelp harvesters, anglers and divers.

Many of us on the CWG are folks who spend a great deal of our time in and around various kelp beds all along our California coast and islands.

We have the right people working on understanding the challenges our kelp forests face, and on finding solutions for both restoration and management.

Our hopes are high, and we have a difficult task of facing harsh realities.

The harshest reality of the moment is the building super El Niño bringing warmer water which will cause a kelp die off that will likely take a couple of years to regrow.

We need to monitor that closely to better understand natural kelp regrowth as water cools after an El Niño and into La Niña which will bring cooler water that kelp thrives in.

There is strong belief that people do have an impact on kelp. While kelp naturally goes through cycles of growth and die offs, we bring challenges including chemical runoff from agriculture, urban runoff, sewage and chemical spills, a litany of challenges to the health of our nearshore ecosystems where kelp lives.

Some of our efforts are misguided. For example, Marina Protected Areas don’t help the kelp. All they do is keep grandpa and the kids out when the family goes fishing. They attract researchers working on grant money.

If a kelp stalk is cut by a propeller, it doesn’t care if it was from a research boat or a fishing boat.

We have examples of restoration and management that work amazingly well. Our prime local example is the Goleta Bay kelp restoration pilot reef deployed by Fish Reef Project.

Now that it has proven to be successful, Fish Reef Project needs financial help to gain permitting and deploy a full-scale kelp restoration reef.

Will you help the kelp? Here are two ways:

1. Go to a pier, coastal bluff, out on a watercraft or plane, then go to this link and enter what you observed … [DRAFT ITERATIVE] Kelp Community Observation Tool. It is a draft tool we need to use broadly and then subsequently refine. Your help will support the overall effort to restore and manage kelp.

2. Go to fishreef.org and offer your help and offer your financial support to make ocean life thrive.