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 →
Sea lemons are confused with leopard dorids, the Monterey dorid and the Atlantic sea lemon. A diver's guide to telling the real Peltodoris nobilis apart.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Sea lettuce (Ulva lactuca): the two-cell-thick green sheet of every harbour — how it grows so fast, why green tides happen, and how it can be put to work.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The sea palm lives where waves hit hardest — a flexible-stiped kelp that bends with the swell. Its biology, mussel-bed alliance and why foraging it is wrong.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Sea spaghetti grows buttons one year and two-metre straps the next. Where thongweed grows, its odd two-stage life, and why it's the forager's best first kelp.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The California sheep crab is a slow, spiny giant of the kelp forest floor — a decorator crab that outgrew its disguise. Meet Loxorhynchus grandis.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The shiner surfperch (Cymatogaster aggregata) is the small, schooling seaperch of Pacific kelp beds and piers — a live-bearing forage fish worth knowing.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Carcinus maenas is Europe's toughest shore crab — a kelp-edge scavenger at home and one of the world's most consequential marine invaders everywhere else.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Pseudobatos productus cruises the sandy flats between kelp forests from California to Baja. How to identify it, what it eats, and why its fate splits at the border.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Leptasterias, the six-rayed star, broods its babies under its own body on the wave-beaten rocks of the Pacific kelp fringe — a small star with a big secret.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The bluntnose sixgill shark is a primitive deep-water giant that rises along kelp-lined fjords and sounds at night — six gills, green eyes, worldwide.
Tom Okafor ·
The soupfin or school shark once blackened the water over kelp coasts — until a vitamin boom nearly erased it. Meet Galeorhinus galeus.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
A species profile of the South American sea lion, the maned beachmaster of the Humboldt and Patagonian kelp coasts — biology, range and fishery friction.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Southern bull kelp (Durvillaea) grips the roughest surf coasts on Earth with the strongest holdfast of any kelp. Honeycomb blades, Māori pōhā, ocean rafting.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The southern right whale is a slow, southern giant with a calloused head — and a documented habit of draping itself in kelp. Its biology, recovery and kelp play.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The Spanish shawl Flabellinopsis iodinea is a purple-and-orange aeolid nudibranch that steals stinging cells from hydroids. Identification, diet, habitat.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Where to find Spanish shawl nudibranchs: the best dive sites and seasons, the hydroid patches they hunt, lookalikes to rule out, and how to photograph one.
Tom Okafor ·
Meet the speckled sanddab (Citharichthys stigmaeus): a palm-sized flatfish that vanishes into sand, feeds the whole kelp coast, and signals bottom health.
Tom Okafor ·
The Pacific spiny lumpsucker is a walnut-sized armoured fish that clamps to kelp and eelgrass with a suction-disc belly. Biology, range, where to look.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The spot prawn lives half its life male and half female, hides in cold rocky depths, and anchors one of the Pacific's most admired trap fisheries.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The spotted ratfish is a deep-bodied chimaera with green eyes, a venomous spine and a forehead clamp — a living fossil that haunts Pacific kelp waters by night.
Tom Okafor ·
The staghorn sculpin cruises Pacific estuaries from Alaska to Baja, tolerates fresh water, and carries venomous antler-like spines on its head.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Pterygophora californica grows a woody stipe that stands for decades, sheltering understory life while faster kelps rise and fall around it. Species profile.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
The Steller sea lion is the largest of the eared seals — a tonne of muscle-hauling out beside North Pacific kelp forests. Its biology, range and hard-won recovery.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Meet the striped seaperch, a live-bearing surfperch of Pacific kelp beds — and a close look at how viviparity works in a fish that births on the reef.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·