20 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY april 11-17, 2024 www.montereycountyweekly.com positive things to say about G2KR’s work. “They’ve been really effective at urchin culling, and they’re adding to the knowledge that we need,” she says. “We need to figure out how to harness the enthusiasm and knowledge of Keith and the divers and work together on this problem, because it’s going to take everybody to solve it.” Grimmer says hopefully by sometime in 2025 there should be data about the aftermath at Tanker’s Reef. She bristles at the notion that kelp forests have been “decimated” around the Monterey Peninsula—rather, she says, the depletion has been highly localized. “I’m an optimist,” she adds. “It’s important to look at all the options, and do this research to see what actually works.” The predominant kelp species around the Monterey Peninsula is giant kelp, the so-called “sequoia of the sea,” which can grow up to 150 feet tall. The other is bull kelp, which grows up to 60 feet, and is an annual, meaning it dies off every year. Giant kelp is a perennial, and sticks around. That’s in part why the kelp die-off set in motion by sea star wasting disease and The Blob hit bull kelp even harder—they struggled to recruit and grow new plants, which is why the North Coast, where bull kelp are predominant, has lost more than 90 percent of its kelp forests in the last decade. On the Central Coast, the loss has been more patchy—perhaps because the coastline is more varied—but around the Monterey Peninsula, kelp loss over the last decade exceeds 80 percent. Mark Carr, the UCSC marine ecologist who was initially hopeful about kelp’s chances to rebound on its own, is now working on the science of how to bring kelp forests back. As resilient as he believed kelp to be, the resilience of urchins has surprised him—he thought for sure the big storms in recent years would make a dent by ripping urchins off the reef. “Many of us thought, this is it baby,” Carr says. “Yet, they’re still out there.” That underscores how little scientists understand about the new dynamics of kelp forest ecosystems, but Carr can confidently say urchin barrens are stable ecosystems, despite their paucity of life. There have been more surprises: Carr co-authored a paper that published in January that showed the persistent kelp forests around the Monterey Peninsula aren’t necessarily in the best spots for recovery—they’re holding on in some places where the water is warmer, and more nutrient-poor due to weak coastal upwelling, so they’re less reproductive. What’s been a better predictor for kelp forest resilience locally, the data shows, is protection from wave disturbance. Carr adds that the loss of sunflower stars had far less impact locally than it did further north, because they weren’t all that abundant here to begin with. Rather, he says the die-off locally has largely been driven by climate change, which will continue to get worse. So what to do? Carr’s been in meetings recently to address how to go about doing kelp restoration in a place, like the Monterey Peninsula, where nearly all the waters are protected. “This is a big deal,” he says. “It’s complicated, and that’s got to get navigated.” In February, California Sea Grant, in partnership with OPC and CDFW, awarded a two-year grant to two, interlinked studies where Carr is the project lead. One will test culling purple and red urchins, and turban snails— which also eat kelp—on the edges of around eight remnant kelp forests on the Monterey Peninsula to see how much that helps and maybe expands them, and how much diver effort it takes. The other is to study temperatures, locations and methods for kelp restoration. Apart from culling, that could be the dispersal of kelp spores in places most likely to flourish. The importance of at least trying to bring back kelp is manifold. One thing Carr’s research has shown is that urchin barrens aren’t driving other species to extinction, they’re just no longer thriving—imagine an ecosystem where 20 species, for example, were all more or less equally represented, and compare it to one where a single species dominates while the other 19 just hang on. Kelp influences life not just within the forest, but life outside of it. One example is that juveniles of some rockfish species like to spend their youth under the protection of a kelp canopy before heading to deeper reefs when they’re mature. In the absence of nursery habitats, Carr says, rockfish numbers will decline. And another reason is just for human enjoyment—kelp harbors fish for us to eat, and provides divers and kayakers a vibrant ecosystem to connect to. Diving in an urchin barren, on the other hand, is akin to hiking on the moon, except at least on the moon one could look up and see stars. Even with all the smart, dedicated people working on kelp restoration, no one knows what the future holds, except that the sea will continue to get warmer. And for the kelp adapted to cool Central Coast waters, that’s not a good thing. Kelp deforestation caught everyone flat-footed, and it’s a scramble to figure out a plan. Officially, that will culminate in a statewide Kelp Management Restoration Plan that is projected to land in 2026. But unlike the scientists and regulators, Rootsaert is antsy to get back to restoration. He’s seen enough, and he estimates there will soon be hundreds of millions of urchins around the Monterey Peninsula. “This is a 50- to 100-year project,” he says. If that’s the case, that gets back to the question about cost: Kelp forests are vital for biodiversity, and they’re important for fisheries, tourism and recreation, but exactly how much does the state value that? At what cost? And as far as laws protecting waters now overrun by urchin barrens, what, exactly, are the laws trying to protect? Certainly not kelp forests, and all the species they harbor. The way things are trending, the kelp forest tank at the Monterey Bay Aquarium is set to become a living natural history exhibit. In the meantime, Rootsaert says he and some fellow divers are looking at potentially working on a restoration project in Ensenada, Mexico, where the regulations are less stringent—they just want to get to work. “We’re in a waiting mode. Why not start somewhere else?” he says. “We’re going to do something.” Aside from potentially doing work in Mexico, they will independently monitor Tanker’s Reef to see their work eaten away. While Rootsaert is not affiliated with divers who do illegal culling, he is aware of them, and notes their work might be skewing the data. “Almost half the kelp in Monterey is in a garden, it’s not natural,” he says. “It would never have survived without [divers].” He knows how easy it is to kill urchins—all it takes is a small welding hammer that costs just a few bucks. Yet how much impact those divers have on kelp restoration will continue to be an unknown for policymakers, because collectively, those divers call themselves Urchin Club, and they have only one rule—don’t talk about Urchin Club. Keith Rootsaert using a hammer to cull an urchin at Tanker’s Reef. Once an urchin is split open—which just requires a firm strike—it dies and becomes food for other creatures, including birds diving underwater. “People like me said, ‘Calm down, kelp will come back.’ We were wrong.” Brandon Cole
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjAzNjQ1NQ==