The Santa Monica Baykeeper Kelp Program

Santa Monica Baykeeper's Kelp Program is internationally recognized for its sustained hands-on, volunteer-based approach to restoring a vital undersea habitat. Since establishing the program in 1997, our Marine Program team has worked acre by acre off the shores of Malibu and Palos Verdes to progressively return bleak urchin barrens into thriving kelp forest communities that support more than 800 species.

In 2010, we performed more than 400 dives with a primary focus on GPS surveying and mapping of remaining offshore urchin barrens in preparation for the expansion of direct restoration in 2011. Partnering with Santa Monica Bay Restoration Commission, Vantuna Research Group, and commercial sea urchin divers, SMBK divers are beginning an acceleration of our program with the goal of restoring more than 50 additional acres of lost kelp forest habitat — ultimately aiming to rid Palos Verdes of all remaining urchin barrens by 2014.

Call for Volunteers

Are you interested in becoming a volunteer diver? We are looking for rescue certified divers to help the kelp restoration effort. You will also need CPR, First Aid and Emergency Oxygen Administration certifications. Please contact Brian Meux for more information at (310) 305-9645 x107 or via email. You can download a complete list of prerequisites here.

Click here for the Kelp Dive Calendar.

About the Giant Kelp Forests

Southern California's giant kelp forests, home to more than 800 species, have been depleted to only 20% of their original size! The culprits? 19th-century furriers who hunted sea otters to extinction. Over-fishing of sheephead fish and native lobsters. And good old 20th-century pollution.

In the end, sea urchins have been left with no predators and a green light to devour the kelp.

Giant kelp beds are one of the most biodiverse communities known to exist in our world’s oceans. Similar to tropical coral reefs, kelp beds are highly productive ecosystems that support a wide array of life. One-fourth of California marine organisms depend on the kelp forests for some part of their life cycle. The survival of the threatened bocaccio, giant black sea bass, the few remaining sea otters and entire industries are dependant on large, stable kelp beds.

Yet kelp beds continue to face numerous threats. Giant kelp canopies off southern California's mainland have been reduced by 80% during the past 100 years. Too many sea urchins, coastal development, pollution, and El Niño events have contributed to the decline in California’s magnificent kelp forests. The over harvest of key sea urchin predators, namely the southern sea otter, California spiny lobster and California sheephead has destabilized the kelp ecosystem. Now sea urchins dominate the rocks rather than kelp and hundreds of species are displaced. This leaves our coastal waters more prone to invasion by non-native species, increases coastal erosion and results in the loss of recreational and commercial opportunities.

Santa Monica Baykeeper established the Kelp Restoration and Monitoring Project in 1997. The challenges of restoring and monitoring this building block of a healthy California ocean community are met through a combination of fieldwork, community action and education. A Technical Advisory Committee composed of expert marine biologists and kelp ecologists assisted the Santa Monica Baykeeper in developing a monitoring and restoration plan for the project.

The Kelp Project relies on volunteer divers who assist in research, monitoring and restoration of the historic kelp beds off of Malibu and the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Since the projects inception thousands of hours have been donated by volunteer divers. The direct results of these efforts are the restoration of thousands of square meters of kelp forest, a better understanding of the status of the nearshore habitat of Santa Monica Bay and the first steps toward the widespread recovery of our coastal kelp forest.

This photograph was taken in January 2011 from the Santa Monica Baykeeper boat by volunteer diver Patrick Vandenbussche. It illustrates a difficult buoy-line "kelp crawl" where an urchin barren has been found inshore of a kelp forest. The near diver has clipped a line to a bouy, and the far divers will need to drag the blue lift bag and 200-300 pounds of urchins while minimizing damage to kelp.

For more Kelp Program photographs, please visit our (under-construction) Kelp Project Photo Gallery.

Program Design

The Santa Monica Baykeeper Kelp Project has developed and refined an experimental design with a combination of restoration, reference, and control sites. Each restoration area consists of three restoration sites (480 square meters each), one reference site (480 square meters), and one control site (480 square meters). At the onset of work, restoration areas are considered urchin barrens — those areas that historically supported kelp forests but which now are totally dominated by urchins. To help understand the ecological effects of work in the restoration sites, monitoring is also conducted in control and reference sites for comparison, where no restoration work is performed. The reference site is a naturally occurring kelp forest nearby with similar characteristics to the restoration sites including, depth, exposure, and substrate type, and the control site is a nearby urchin barren that also shares similar physical characteristics.

Kelp Project restoration work includes relocating urchins, primarily purple urchins (Strongylocentrotus purpuratus), and kelp seeding techniques. Urchin relocation involves hand and net collection of all species of urchins by SCUBA divers. Urchins are then floated to the surface with lift bags, hoisted onto the boat, counted, and dispersed over a large area to avoid damage to other local reefs. Once an area’s urchin density is reduced to approximately 1 to 2 urchins per square meter the heavy grazing pressure is released and kelp can naturally grow. Urchin density is also reduced in areas surrounding each restoration site, creating a buffer to ensure sustainability of the restored kelp forest habitat. Kelp growth is also facilitated by seeding the restoration sites using sporophyll bags, bags collected from productive kelp forests containing reproductive kelp blades, or sporophylls. Sporophyll bags are floated one meter above the reef in order to disperse spores over the recently cleared reef.

Acknowledgments

Special thanks to local dive shops that help support the Kelp Project and Baykeeper volunteer divers:

• Eco Dive Center
• Hollywood Divers
• Malibu Scuba Repair
• Ocean Adventures
• Scubahaus
• Scuba School of America, Montclair
• Sport Chalet, Marina Del Rey

Thanks also to the many divers who have made and continue to make the Kelp Program possible.

Kelp Program Annual Reports

• 2010 (coming soon)
• 2009
• 2008
  
• 2007