11 articles
The bat star (Patiria miniata) is the kelp forest's web-fingered clean-up crew — a slow omnivore that turns detritus into reef fertility. Facts, ecology, where to see one.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Kelp forests export a share of everything they grow. Here's how drift kelp feeds open water, beach wrack feeds the shore, and why leaving wrack alone matters.
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 ·
Those bulbs along a kelp frond are gas bladders called pneumatocysts. Here's what's inside them, how kelp inflates them, and why a forest floats.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
A kelp canopy is a living skylight — filtering intensity, colour and flicker for everything beneath it. How that sculpted light builds the understorey.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Kelp blades are packed with food — so why don't grazers eat them all? Inside the chemical arms race between brown algae and the herbivores that hunt them.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
At dusk the kelp forest changes shifts: plankton rises, fish reposition, predators hunt the borders. The daily migrations that run the reef's nightly economy.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
The red turban snail (Chlorostoma funebralis) grazes the kelp forest's turf night and day — and when its numbers swing, whole reefs can tilt. A species profile.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
Storms tear kelp forests apart — and keep them young. How wave forces damage kelp, why disturbance is essential to forest health, and what a stormier future means.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Light is kelp's only real ceiling. How seawater absorbs and scatters sunlight, what sets kelp's depth limit, and why water clarity is a restoration variable.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
A trophic cascade happens when a predator's removal rewrites an entire ecosystem. The sea otter–urchin–kelp story is ecology's classic case — here's how it works.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·