The scientists fighting to save the ocean’s most important carbon capture system

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-solutions/2021/07/05/kelp-forests-destroyed-sea-urchins/]

Source: By Lucy Sherriff, The Washington Post 

Excerpt: Kelp forests cover a quarter of the world’s coastlines, ...providing food and shelter for thousands of species, while sucking carbon from the atmosphere. ...The fate of the world’s kelp forests may depend on controlling its sworn enemy — sea urchins — and the Nature Conservancy ...says it has a plan. It is touting urchins as a culinary cuisine, hoping to appeal to commercial fishermen who could scoop them out of the ocean. It is also attempting to increase the population of their natural predators, sea stars and growing kelp in controlled environments before releasing the algae back into the sea. ...Kelp are essentially the ocean’s equivalent of trees. They absorb carbon dioxide and nitrogen compounds, helping clean the atmosphere while capturing up to 20 times more carbon per acre than land forests. They also provide a vital habitat for a broad range of marine life; without them, entire ocean ecosystems would crumble. But the size of kelp forests off the coast of Northern California has shrunk by more than 95 percent since 2014, according to satellite data analyzed by the Nature Conservancy. Other regions have had similar losses: Tasmania’s canopies have decreased by 95 percent, as have Chile’s. Globally, kelp forests along coastlines have declined by a third over the past decade, according to a paper published in the American Institute of Biological Sciences journal BioScience.... 

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