“Perfect Storm” Decimates Northern California Kelp Forests

[petronius]

Northern California kelp forests have been reduced to an all-time low due to a “perfect storm” of large-scale ecological impacts. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) marine invertebrate management team has conducted annual ecosystem surveys of kelp forests in Sonoma and Mendocino counties since the late 1990s, and recent observations have caused concern about the state of the kelp forests. The severe reduction in kelp has already impacted the recreational red abalone fishery and commercial red urchin fishery, two economically important fisheries in northern California.

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A series of large-scale catastrophic events recently combined into a “perfect storm” of ecological impacts that triggered dramatic shifts in the kelp forest ecosystem on the north coast. Environmental stressors included impacts from a toxic algae bloom off the Sonoma coast in 2011, a widespread sea star disease in 2013 that was followed by an explosion in the sea urchin population, and the warm water conditions that have persisted offshore since 2014.

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https://cdfwmarine.wordpress.com/2016/03/30/perfect-storm-decimates-kelp/





Lots more info and links at the link...

[yourpaljoey]

1. Damn that is sad. I love those kelp forests.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

2. Eat more urchins

Simple enough. Keep the season open longer.

- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community

[Lucky Luciano]

3. Works for me! I'm an uni freak! nt

[Brother Buzz]

4. In my perfect world, this would be a boom for the sea otter population

Like starfish, sea otters love sea urchins, but unfortunately the population is way down because they are suffering from a brain disease caused by a single-cell deadly parasite. A single-cell parasite introduced from land.