26 articles
Diverse kelp forests ride out marine heatwaves that wipe out simple ones. Here's the ecology of the biodiversity–stability relationship — and how it guides restoration.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Croatia's island-chained coast grows the Mediterranean's great brown algal canopies on drowned karst — clear water, coralligenous reefs and forests now measured in fragments.
Dr. Theo Nakamura ·
A volcanic island 250 km off Baja with great white sharks above, recovering fur seals on the rocks, and a giant kelp forest that ride out the great heatwaves.
Tom Okafor ·
The Gulf of Maine is warming faster than almost any body of water on Earth. What that means for its sugar kelp forests, its lobster economy, and its future.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Marine heatwaves can erase a kelp crop in weeks. A practical playbook: site strategies, seedstock, timing shifts, monitoring triggers and financial shock absorbers.
Naomi Reyes ·
A kelp canopy does more than block light — it quietly rewrites the heat below. How canopy shade builds cool micro-refuges during heat spikes.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Between kelp generations lives a microscopic stage that can simply wait — pausing reproduction through heat, dark and scarcity. Inside gametophyte dormancy.
Dr. Elias Brandt ·
Selective breeding is coming to kelp farming. How hatcheries find, cross and test thermally tolerant strains — and what 'climate-resilient seed' really means.
Dr. Elias Brandt ·
How attribution science works for marine heatwaves — fraction of attributable risk, model counterfactuals, and what it means for baselines and reversal risk.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Marine heatwaves are spikes riding on a rising baseline of ocean warming. How scientists separate the two signals — and why the difference matters for reefs.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Over 90 percent of the planet's trapped heat is in the ocean. How we measure ocean heat content, from expendable probes to 4,000 drifting floats — and why it matters.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
How satellites derive sea surface temperature from infrared and microwave radiometers, why clouds and fog mask kelp coasts, and how scientists validate SST.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Tide pools are mini-climates in a handful of seawater. Some shield life through marine heatwaves; others become traps. The physics, the genetics and the conservation case.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Withering syndrome has killed millions of abalone since the 1980s — a bacterial disease switched on by warm water. The science of the pathogen and outbreaks.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Every few years the Pacific reorganises itself and kelp forests pay the price. How El Niño starves kelp — and how La Niña's cool afterwash lets it recover.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Seasonal ocean forecasts can now flag elevated marine heatwave risk months ahead — sometimes. Here's what skill exists, where it fails, and who uses it.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
From the Blob to the record-breaking 2023–24 ocean, the last decade of marine heatwave records shows extremes growing — and kelp forests in the firing line.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Marine heatwaves are now a farm-planning reality. Triggers to watch, decision trees for warm years, and the seedstock and layout choices that hedge the heat.
Naomi Reyes ·
Marine heatwaves are weeks of anomalously hot ocean that can deforest entire coastlines. Here's the science behind them and what restoration can do.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Why the ocean warms so slowly: heat capacity, thermal inertia and deep mixing hide enormous heat. What the ocean's long lag means for kelp forests and coasts.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
Every kelp species has a temperature window. Learn the physiology of heat stress, why gametophytes are weakest, and how scientists measure and breed thermal tolerance.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
How do scientists decide if a specific marine heatwave was caused by climate change? Inside event attribution, from FAR to counterfactual oceans.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
A field guide to Northern California's bull kelp collapse — the heatwave, the urchin explosion, the closed fisheries, and the difficult road back.
Dr. Mara Ellison ·
Marine heatwaves are ranked Categories I–IV like cyclones — but the scale measures a temperature anomaly, not wind. Here's how the Hobday system works and how to read it.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
When heatwaves strip a coastline's kelp, some reefs stay cool and keep their forests. Here's how thermal refugia form — and why they're restoration gold.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·
A coastal atlas guide to the northern Gulf of California: the warm-water edge of kelp, Eisenia arborea forests, tidal mixing and a sea under heat stress.
Dr. Lena Fischer ·