Underwater forests of kelp host a greater diversity of plants and animals than almost any other ocean community, and they’re vital for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. However, kelp species are showing "alarming signs of decline" in waters around the world, often due to climate change. Now, an innovative project in Victoria, Australia is growing baby kelp in labs and transplanting it to the sea to help restore these vital ecosystems.
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00:00It doesn't look like it, but these are troubled waters.
00:12Just below the surface, a small spiny creature is wreaking havoc.
00:19These barren areas are quite striking in that they really aren't barren, there's not a lot
00:22growing there.
00:23They're kind of devoid of the typical healthy marine life that you'd expect to find.
00:28Sea urchins are eating their way through the golden kelp forests here in Victoria's Port
00:33Phillip Bay.
00:38Researchers from the University of Melbourne are out counting urchins.
00:42So we swim out to see how they're going.
00:45The highest today was 20 per square metre.
00:48In a healthy kelp forest, you'll find about four urchins per square metre.
00:53They estimate there's about 130 million of these urchins currently in Port Phillip Bay.
00:59A big issue was increased nutrients being pumped into the bay in things like waste water,
01:05which provided extra food.
01:08When the water in the bay was cleaned up, the excess urchins went in search of something
01:13else to eat and started demolishing the kelp.
01:16You change the balance in the natural system and then, you know, things get out of balance.
01:23In a bid to restore balance, the team, led by the Nature Conservancy, has been growing
01:28kelp in a lab and then planting it here.
01:30What are you marking out here, Scott?
01:33We're going to mark the two ends of our plots, they're about 50 metres by 20 metres in size.
01:37We'll mark the two ends of those and we're going to jump in the water and see all the
01:40kelp that's grown.
01:42This kelp was planted a bit under a year ago.
01:47In the first two years of the project, the team has planted 400,000 baby kelp, many of
01:55them here in this restoration area.
01:57And you can already see many of these kelp are taking and growing in this area and replenishing
02:04what was once an urchin barren.
02:06The couple of months since you've planted that, how much has it grown?
02:09Yeah, so when we plant these out, they're about up to five millimetres in size, so they're
02:13pretty little, we can just see them with our eyes.
02:16And we see some pretty rapid growth, it's quite a satisfying species to watch.
02:20Elsewhere in the bay, some healthy kelp forests remain.
02:28So this is the goal?
02:30That's right, yeah, so what we're looking at here is a healthy kelp forest.
02:35It's not just kelp that's thriving, it's other seaweed species and marine life.
02:40Lots of fish and crabs and crustaceans and abalone and all these things really rely on
02:44those kelp forests to be there in order to survive.
02:47So it's important for that, they provide a really good benefit in terms of being able
02:50to protect our shorelines, they improve our water quality.
02:54The Victorian Government has just given $300,000 to keep the project going for the next three
03:00years.
03:01But the team says more funding will be needed long term.
03:04Because we really want some big bold commitments to help us really take this to scale.
03:09And hopefully restore some underwater forests.