The Santa Barbara Channel’s kelp forests and its sandy beaches are intimately connected. Giant kelp, the foundation species of rocky reefs, serves as a major part of the beach food web as fronds of ...
Adorably fuzzy sea otters aren’t just cute. The marine mammals serve a crucial role, helping to restore the giant kelp forests they rely on by removing their top predators, the sea urchins. When ...
Lacking natural predators and able to survive long after food sources are diminished, purple sea urchins are devastating kelp forests, an important carbon sink. The founders of a Newport startup have ...
Though spatially distinct, the Santa Barbara Channel’s subtidal kelp forests and its sandy beaches are intimately connected. Giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera), the foundation species of rocky reefs, ...
"All of this motivates us to continue gathering information." ...
Add Yahoo as a preferred source to see more of our stories on Google. Researchers examining a century of ocean maps made an exciting discovery linking sea otter populations to kelp forests: Where sea ...
With their roly-poly bodies, child-like eyes, long whiskers and tiny padded paws, otters are some of the most charismatic animals in nature. But while being cute doesn't serve much purpose in the wild ...
The kelp forests that hug the Pacific coastline are an underwater jungle. They're a thicket of colossal algae intermixed with a pageant of life that includes snails, urchins, sea lions, sea otters, ...
While kelp forests persist along northern Maine’s rocky coast, kelp abundance has declined by as much as 80% on the southern coast in recent decades. In its stead, carpet-like turf algae have moved in ...
La Jolla and Point Loma are home to the largest giant kelp forests on the West Coast, but those golden underwater forests are shrinking as ocean temperatures rise. A new study from Scripps Institution ...
When sea otters were reintroduced along the coastlines of islands in Southern California and British Columbia, researchers saw kelp forests return to areas that were destroyed by sea urchins. But how ...
A new study uncovers a symphony of synchrony between the kelp forest and beach, with broader implications for the beach food web as the climate changes. The Santa Barbara Channel's kelp forests and ...