New satellite images show Northern California's kelp forest almost gone. Here's the reason

[PufPuf23]

New satellite images show Northern California's kelp forest almost gone. Here's the reason

Tara Duggan March 5, 2021 Updated: March 5, 2021 8:32 p.m.

The kelp forest that only eight years ago formed a leafy ocean canopy along the Northern California coast has almost completely disappeared, and scientists who study kelp and the species that depend on it are worried about its inability to bounce back.

A new study from UC Santa Cruz found that the kelp forest on the Sonoma and Mendocino coast has declined by an average of 95% since 2013. It analyzed satellite imagery going back to 1985 to investigate how a series of factors led to the kelp forest’s abrupt decline, including an explosion in the population of purple sea urchin, which eats it, and two marine heat waves. The research shows the unprecedented destruction was related to unusual ocean warming and that the kelp forest likely won’t recover any time soon, partly because removing the urchins is so difficult.

“They can actually survive under starvation conditions,” said Meredith McPherson, a graduate student at UC Santa Cruz’s Ocean Sciences department and coauthor of the study. “The impact has been that basically there is no kelp forest at all left, really.”

Bull kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana) usually thrives in the rocky coastal zones of Sonoma and Mendocino counties and creates a habitat for many types of fish and invertebrates, including abalone, sea urchin, jellyfish and sea snails. Its disappearance also has had impacts on local tourism and other businesses — the abalone fishery closed to recreational divers in 2018, and Mendocino County’s commercial red sea urchin fishery is almost completely shut down.

remainder of article (incudes photos and maps) at : https://www.sfchronicle.com/local/environment/article/New-satellite-images-show-Northern-California-s-16001922.php

[Hugh_Lebowski]

1. Let me guess ... the warmer water is more conducive to sustaining the population

of purple sea urchins?

This is bad friggin news

[ProudMNDemocrat]

2. Having done a lot of SCUBA diving off California

The Kelp forests are essential to ocean life in general.

[PufPuf23]

3. The kelp are the central structure to the off shore

ecosystem; no kelp, most components of the ecosystem are also gone or greatly reduced.

This should be front page news and highest priority save for the shit storm that is the World at present.