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 →
Gelidium, the agar weed: how to recognise this small red seaweed, where it grows, and why its gels run from dessert moulds to microbiology labs.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The giant kelpfish changes colour to vanish among kelp blades. Identification, camouflage, behaviour and life cycle of this Southern California clinid.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Megathura crenulata, the giant keyhole limpet, cloaks its shell in a living mantle and bleeds blue blood prized by medicine. Identification, diet and reef role.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Apostichopus californicus, the biggest sea cucumber on the Pacific coast, recycles kelp forest sediment from Alaska to California. Biology, defences, fishery.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Meet the giant spined sea star, Pisaster giganteus — a blue-gray, knobby-armed giant of kelp-edge sand flats that hunts sand dollars and can span half a metre.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The goldsinny wrasse is the most abundant small wrasse on Europe's kelp coasts — a parasite cleaner, nest guard and aquaculture conscript. Full species profile.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Lepas anatifera spends its life attached to flotsam — kelp rafts, driftwood, plastic. Anatomy, the goose myth, tsunami debris and where to find them.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The gopher rockfish is a mottled, hole-dwelling resident of California's shallow kelp reefs — sedentary, long-lived and beloved of reef divers.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The graceful kelp crab is the smaller, rougher, more widely wandering sibling of the northern kelp crab — as at home in eelgrass as on a kelp frond.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Meet the grass rockfish (Sebastes rastrelliger): a shallow-water ambush predator that barely leaves home — and pays for that loyalty when the pressure comes.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Gray whales swim some 10,000 km each way between Arctic feeding grounds and Baja lagoons, hugging the kelp line. Feeding, migration, kelping and survival.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Gray whales hug kelp coastlines for 20,000 kilometres a year — feeding, rubbing and hiding calves in the kelp line. The whale–kelp forest connection, explained.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Profile of the great sculpin — one of the largest sculpins of the North Pacific, its spiny head, ambush hunting and role in cold kelp-edge food webs.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Haliotis fulgens, the green abalone, is a kelp-trapping herbivore of Baja and southern California. Shell, life cycle, fishery history and recovery.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Endemic to New Zealand, the green-lipped mussel filters big southern water, builds reef — and anchors one of the world's most admired shellfish farms.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The green sea urchin grazes kelp from Norway to Nova Scotia to Alaska. Its biology, the barrens it builds, the roe fishery it feeds, and how reefs recover.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The grunt sculpin is a thumb-sized fish that walks on its fin rays, hides inside empty barnacle shells and, it seems, impersonates the barnacle itself.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Beyond the species profile: how the gumboot chiton's iron-toothed grazing shapes crustose coralline algae, kelp recruitment and the wave-washed reef.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The hairy shore crab is the Pacific coast's estuary specialist — bristle-legged, slow-footed and more comfortable in brackish water than its purple cousin.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The halfmoon (Medialuna californiensis) is a blue-grey sea chub that grazes kelp on Southern California and Baja reefs — ID, diet and habitat.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Do harbour seals live in kelp forests? Not quite — but they hunt in them, pup beside them and shape them. Inside the seal–kelp relationship.
Tom Okafor ·
Meet the harlequin duck: slate-blue plumage, winter life in the surf zone, and summers on wild mountain rivers. Identification, ecology and where to look.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The hooded nudibranch Melibe leonina is a translucent sea slug that nets plankton from its perch on kelp blades. Biology, diet and where to see one.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The horn shark is a small, harmless shark that hunts urchins and abalone by night in kelp beds. Biology, the fin spines, the purple teeth, the screw-shaped egg.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·