While on the coast of California
the Ocean Adventures team dives in several giant kelp forests that look vastly different from each other.
 
This one, a kelp forest in Monterey Bay, is struggling.
See how it looks deserted?
That's because the food web here has been disrupted, partly because of decades of heavy fishing.
 
With some time, this kelp forest might recover and be restored to this:
 
a thriving kelp forest, teeming with life.
Here's a healthy giant kelp plant. With giant kelp, the anchor is called a holdfast,
the stem is called a stipe. and the leaves are called blades.
Healthy kelp like this grows at a phenomenal rate in ideal conditions, as much as two feet per day!
This kelp forest and the chilly waters off Point Lobos is a textbook case of trophic ecology at work.
Sea lions hunt and play among the kelp, fish dart and dine in the dappled light, and
sea stars creep along the rocks searching for food.
Each of these organisms has an important role to play as part of the Kelp Forest Ecosystem,
whether as a producer or a consumer.
An ecosystem is a community of organisms that interact with each other and their physical environment
When any element of this delicate balance is disrupted, the vitality of the Ecosystem is threatened.
At the surface, a sea otter is wrapped up in kelp to keep from drifting while it eats.
Sea otters, predators native to kelp forests, dine on all sorts of goodies including clams mussels, abalone, and sea urchins.
In a healthy kelp forest, sea urchins consume pieces of kelp that have fallen to the ocean floor.
However when the sea otters and other predators of the sea urchins are removed from the ecosystem, the sea urchin population booms.
Left unchecked, sea urchins mow down all of the kelp!
Jeopardizing the existence of the entire kelp forest.
With a greater understanding of the inter-connectedness of species in kelp forests we can work to protect their inhabitants,
large and small, furry, finned, and spiny.
