Forests in the Sea

My name is Garibaldi. This is my home. Isn’t it beautiful?

People once tried to catch me and put me into a small tank. Can you imagine that? I would have died of claustrophobia. Pardon the big word. It means dread of tight places.

But I am safe now. I was made California’s state marine fish, and now I am protected.

If you wish to learn about my lovely home and meet some of my neighbors, please read about the [Forests in the Sea]

VISITORS to the groves of California’s giant coast redwoods stand and gaze up in silent wonder. Surrounded by the huge trunks towering upward, the leafy canopy high overhead, the shafts of light slanting down through this green ceiling, you feel small and insignificant. With the silence, the stillness, the shafts of light so dramatically defined against the shade of the great forest engulfing you​—a feeling of reverential awe steals over you. Many relate to these forests of giant redwoods.

Not so many relate to forest giants of another kind. They stand not on the coast but just off the coast of California. They, too, tower upward, spread a canopy overhead, with shafts of light penetrating down into the gloom of their environment. There also is a silence, a stillness, and light beams that add a haunting beauty to the forest surrounding you​—and similar feelings of wonder and awe wash over you.

This forest has no trees, but fronds; no trunks, but stipes; no leaves, but blades; no roots, but holdfasts. This forest is underwater. Its fancy name is Macrocystis pyrifera, its common one is giant kelp​—brown algae and “the largest and fastest-growing marine plant in the world.” Visitors to its forests must carry their air with them, so they don scuba gear and also wet suits to protect against the cold of the sea. And if they wish to take away more than memories, they must carry with them underwater cameras and artificial lighting.

Giant kelp starts out microscopically small. Spores attach themselves to rocks up to a hundred feet deep, develop into microscopic male and female plantlets, which combine sperm and eggs to produce an embryo.a From these embryos fronds grow upward; spaghettilike cords grow downward. The fronds reach for the surface and sunlight, the cords glue tightly to rocks and anchor the plants in place. Called haptera, these cords grow into large bundles and are known as holdfasts.

As the fronds grow they add blades with gas-filled floats to keep themselves headed for the surface of the sea. There they continue to grow, spreading out to form dense canopies. Each frond may live only six months, but new ones grow up from the holdfast. The whole kelp plant can live for five years or more. It absorbs nutrients throughout its whole supple structure​—blades, stipes, and holdfasts.

And the fronds grow up to two feet a day! They may grow a hundred feet or more to reach the surface, then add another hundred feet to form the floating canopy. It is through these canopies of floating kelp that shafts of sunlight penetrate to add an ethereal beauty, an otherworldliness, to this underwater realm.

A kelp bed teems with life. Scientists claim that just one mature kelp plant can support over a million organisms. Some 178 species live in the holdfasts alone​—crabs, nudibranchs, brittle stars, worms, and others. In all, an estimated 800 species live in and around a kelp bed, using it as food, shelter, or hunting grounds. Starfish, anemones, jellyfish, moray eels, and many fish frequent the kelp beds. One very pugnacious little fellow is the bright-orange garibaldi​—also distinguished as California’s state marine fish.

Late in the 1950’s many of the California kelp forests were near extinction. Warmer seas will kill kelp, and storms tear them loose from their holdfasts, but the main threat was from the sea urchin. It was, as it often is, man’s doing. Kelco corporation’s news release explains:

“Sea urchins are spiney marine creatures that feed on kelp holdfasts, fronds and young plants. The near decimation of the sea urchin’s most effective natural enemy, the sea otter, by large-scale hunting in earlier years had upset the ecological balance of the kelp beds. Urchins, left free to satisfy their appetites on kelp began reproducing unchecked and devoured vast stretches of kelp forest. Urchins were recorded as moving up to 30 feet a month through the kelp beds.”

But the remedy was also man’s doing. The sea otter became protected, their numbers increased, the sea urchins decreased, and the kelp forests are recovering. As Kelco reports: “Today, our kelp forests are beginning to near the generous boundaries occupied some sixty years ago. The ecological balance is being restored, and a once endangered natural resource has been reborn.”

And, with this rebirth, divers once more glide through the kelp jungles and with cameras clicking bring back to us a small measure of the glories to be found in these forests in the sea.

[Footnotes]

[Full-page picture on page 17]

[Pictures on page 18]

Sea Otter

Sea Urchins

Holdfast