Kelp: The planet's other forest crisis

The decline of California’s kelp forests since the 2013-2017 marine heatwave has seen only minor recovery despite heroic restoration efforts by scientists, fishermen, coastal tribes, volunteer divers and conservationists. The threat from kelp is also not localized. Rather, this loss, like the expansion of mega-wildfires on earth, from Los Angeles to Siberia and from Canada to Australia, comes in response to an ever-changing world where 90 percent of human-generated heat from burning fossil fuels is absorbed by the ocean.