Structured profiles of the species that build, inhabit and depend on kelp forests — from giant kelp to sea otters, urchins to weedy seadragons.
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The Humboldt penguin breeds in guano caves on the desert coast of Chile and Peru, and fishes in one of the richest — and most changeable — seas on Earth.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Humboldt squid (Dosidicus gigas): the fast-growing red devil of the Eastern Pacific, its twilight-zone life, and its warm-year marches north.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Irish moss is the small red alga of North Atlantic shores that gave the world carrageenan. Profile: ecology, history, harvest and modern uses.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Kelp greenling are the kelp forest's most colourful small residents — blue-speckled, sex-changing-looking, nest-guarding. Biology, fishery and where to see them.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The kelp gull is the default large gull of the southern oceans — an adaptable black-backed coastal bird from Cape Town to the Antarctic Peninsula. Full profile.
Tom Okafor ·
Kelp isopods graze fouling algae off giant kelp blades — and in boom years can chew through the stipes themselves. Meet the forest's smallest crew.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Membranipora membranacea skins kelp blades in white lattices of tiny zooids — a grazer, a fouler and, in warm years, a real force in kelp forest loss.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
How the kelp perch spends its whole life inside the kelp canopy — feeding, cleaning larger fish and raising live-born young — and what canopy loss means for it.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The kelp rockfish (Sebastes atrovirens) lives in the kelp canopy itself — a mottled, camouflaged hunter: identification, habitat, life history and where to see it.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The spiny scallop Chlamys hastata is a sponge-armoured, blue-eyed bivalve of Pacific kelp forests that can swim away from sea stars. Full species profile.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The leather star (Dermasterias imbricata) is a smooth, slippery, garlic-scented sea star that hunts anemones and sea cucumbers — biology, range and how to find it.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
About a kilogram of slate-blue determination, the little penguin fishes southern Australia's kelp coasts by day and comes ashore by dark. Meet Eudyptula minor.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The long-spined sea urchin is reshaping Australia's temperate reefs as warming currents carry it south — a species profile of the barren-builder of Tasmania.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
The lumpfish is a lumpy, suction-bellied cold-water fish that farms raise by the million to eat sea lice off salmon — and its roe fishery is older than you think.
Naomi Reyes ·
Marbled, thick-lipped and built to crop kelp: the marblefish of New Zealand and southern Australia, a herbivore with the reef's strangest tools.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The monkeyface prickleback is a long, algae-eating fish of Pacific rockpools — not an eel at all. Biology, the diet switch, and why poke-polers prize it.
Tom Okafor ·
Why do moon jellies suddenly fill a kelp bay in their thousands? The science of jellyfish blooms — what triggers them, what they mean, when to worry.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Moonglow anemone (Anthopleura artemisia) species profile: the gravel-coated anemone that buries its column in sediment beneath rocks, and how to find it.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
With up to sixteen arms and a taste for other sea stars, the morning sun star is the kelp forest's fastest hunter — and a weathervane of sea star wasting.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The mossy chiton is a surf-swept grazer in eight overlapping plates, its girdle bristling like a tiny hedgehog. Meet Mopalia muscosa of the rocky shore.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The pinto abalone is the small, iridescent grazer of the northeast Pacific — endangered since the 1990s and the focus of a careful hatchery recovery effort.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Northern anchovy (Engraulis mordax): the filter-feeding forage fish behind seabirds, salmon and sea lions all along the Pacific kelp coast.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Northern fur seals spend most of their lives far offshore, then crowd onto island beaches to breed. Range, deep diving, the fur trade's shadow and recovery.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Rāpoka, the New Zealand sea lion, is one of the world's rarest sea lions — a subantarctic breeder slowly recolonising the mainland coast. Its biology and comeback story.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·