Structured profiles of the species that build, inhabit and depend on kelp forests — from giant kelp to sea otters, urchins to weedy seadragons.
322 articles · Browse the structured Encyclopedia →
Soft as jelly, clinging like a limpet: the kelp snailfish lives where the forest meets the rock. Identification, ecology and where to look for one.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The leafy seadragon is the most perfectly disguised fish in the sea. Explore its South Australian strongholds, brooding males and fragile future.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The masked greenling is a small, dark-barred reef fish of Alaska's shallow kelp and eelgrass beds. How to identify it — and the nest-guarding life it leads.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Nori comes from red algae with a decades-long life-cycle mystery — solved in 1949 by a British phycologist whose discovery built an entire industry.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The northern kelp crab is a colour-changing spider crab that lives its whole life in the kelp canopy. Learn its biology, diet, and role in the forest.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The Pacific tube anemone isn't a true anemone at all. Meet Pachycerianthus fimbriatus: the felt-tubed, double-crowned ambush fisher of kelp-forest sand flats.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Giant red sea cucumbers vacuum the kelp forest floor, recycle nutrients and buffer reef chemistry — and global fisheries show what happens when they're gone.
Naomi Reyes ·
Small, barred and easy to overlook, the reef surfperch works the noisy seam where kelp forest meets breaking surf — and gives birth to fully formed young.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Aggregating anemone (Anthopleura elegantissima) species profile: clonal armies, tentacle wars, symbiotic algae and survival at the top of the rocky shore.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Profile of the buffalo sculpin — its jutting preopercular spines, reported venom, bright guarded egg masses and life in northeast Pacific kelp beds.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The California sheephead is a sex-changing kelp-forest wrasse whose jaws keep sea urchins in check. Learn its life history, role and recovery story.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Elk kelp grows deep, in clear water, with a single antlered float the size of a grapefruit. The deep edge kelp of the Channel Islands and Baja — biology and status.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Meet the harbour porpoise, the small, shy cetacean of northern coasts: how to identify it, where it lives, what it eats, and why gillnets haunt it.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Kina is Aotearoa's endemic sea urchin — treasured kaimoana, a kelp grazer, and the engineer behind New Zealand's barren reefs. Here is its biology and its story.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Kombu is the kelp behind dashi and the backbone of the world's seaweed farms. Learn its biology, life cycle, Hokkaido roots and future in a warming sea.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The northern clingfish grips rough rock with a suction disc no engineered cup can match. Meet the small fish that surfs storm surge under stones and holdfasts.
Dr. Elias Brandt ·
Urticina crassicornis, the painted or Christmas anemone of North Pacific kelp reefs: identification, diet, reproduction and its place in the cold-water forest.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Portrait of the Port Jackson shark: Australia's gentle, crested egg-layer that crunches sea urchins and returns to the same reef year after year.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The purple sea urchin turned patches of California kelp forest into barrens. Learn its biology, its hidden hunger, and why it is both villain and victim.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The red sea urchin can live a century, grows to dinner-plate size, and feeds the uni trade. Meet the kelp forest's most venerable grazer — and its fishery.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Sea otters eat a quarter of their body weight a day — much of it sea urchins. How this small predator became the kelp forest's most famous keystone species.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Meet Aeolidia papillosa, the shag rug nudibranch: a cold-water sea slug that hunts anemones, steals their stinging cells and wears them as armour.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The starry flounder is the North Pacific's most river-loving flatfish, banded in orange and black. How to identify it, where it hunts, and why estuaries need it.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Wakame is a beloved edible kelp in Japan and Korea — and one of the world's most widespread invasive seaweeds. Understand both sides of Undaria pinnatifida.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·