‘The forgotten forest’: how smashing 5.6m urchins saved a California kelp paradise | California

On a Tuesday in July, various Mitch Johnson and Sean Taylor Shimmy in their combinations at the back of the R / V Xenarcha, a 28 -foot boat floating off the coast of Rancho Palos Verdes, south of Los Angeles. Behind them, the clear waters of the Pacific are dotted with an armed green world forest, waving like mermaid hair underwater.

We are here to study the giant Pacific Varech, a species that formerly prospered in these icy waters. But in the past two decades, a combination of warm ocean temperatures, pollution, overfishing and the proliferation of hungry sea urchins that devour Varech caused an 80% drop in the forest along the southern coast of California.

In recent years, scientists have organized a return – amounting to one of the most important and successful Varech restoration projects in the world. To do this, they recruited an army of divers brandishing hammers to break and clean the voracious sea urchins. Today’s journey is a chance to see this success closely.

Given from the edge of the boat, the Frondes de Varech are so thick and robust in places that they form carpets on the surface of the ocean, fairly robust for egrets and herons allowed while pushing fish below. These waters host a multitude of species, shiny Garibaldi orange fish and white sharks that navigate silently on the coast to the blue whales that sail through the deep canal a few kilometers to the east.

Divers like Johnson and Taylor have a variety of tools at their disposal. Some days, they collect rock hammers – like an underwater version of the seven dwarfs – and plunge to open the Vioce purple sea urchins that destroy Varech’s baby. But today, they are only armed with a band and a camera to study the status of this gigantic concealed forest.

Gear on, the divers give a boost to Tom Ford, director general of Bay Foundation, a non -profit organization dedicated to the restoration of the Bay of Santa Monica and its coastal waters, which pilots the boat. With a small splash, they disappear in the water. Ford and I are waiting, with the silent slap of the waves on the side of the Xenarcha, to see what they find.

Directed by the Bay Foundation, the divers of the Bay of Santa Monica spent 15,575 hours under water in the past 13 years. To bring back the Varech, they focus on minimizing the impact of a voracious eater: the purple sea urchin. The effort was successful, breaking 5.8 million purple sea urchins and 80.7 acres cleaner (32.7 hectares, the size of 61 football fields), and allowing Varech to return.

But with the results contained far offshore and submarine, has anyone noticed? Ford wonders the same thing. “We call it the forgotten forest,” he says.

Cathedrals in the sea

Fast growing Varech ecosystems are known as the “Sequoias of the sea” for a good reason: they store large quantities of carbon, create a habitat for more than 800 marine species and dull the powerful force of storm waves. Technically, they are macro-algae and can grow up to 2 feet each day, reaching 100 feet from a reef bed on the surface.

For those who have had the chance to see the Varech under the waves, it may look like a fairy tale – a forest, but instead of crossing it, you fly underwater.

Ford still remembers the first time he has plunged into the forest as a diving diver. Sun light looked like languages ​​of waving flame through the blades underwater, and the light stems cast a glance through the small holes of the canopy. “It looked like a cathedral, with a slight shot through the stained glass,” he said. “And sometimes you float through this and there are thousands of fish of all kinds of colors that float everywhere. It’s like flying through a forest of unimaginably dense life.”

But for a while, these glorious environments were at risk of disappearing. When the Bay Foundation began working in these waters in 2012, the sea bed looked like purple carpets – covered in beares bristling with the size of an endemic golf ball.

It was a symptom of an ecosystem that has become without diversion, with multiple overlapping injuries: sea otters, which eat sea urchins like a basic food of their diet, were almost destroyed by the 19th century hunters. Then, from the 1940s to the 1970s, a large quantity of DDT was released from a chemical plant in the sea off the coast of Palos Verdes. The sediments of landslides also buried the reefs by lemon, preventing anything from growing up. More recently, local sea stars, who eat sea urchins, have been struck by a waxed disease and turned to Goo. There were only sea urchins left, who eat the Varech at an incredible pace, and have scratched the reef bed so much that the spores of Varech still could not take foot.

Ford and the Bay Foundation have carried out several tests to determine the optimal quantity of opening per square meter: two. Meanwhile, certain areas of the barns had 70 to 80 sea urchins per meter. As they did not have much to eat, they were mainly empty – hungry zombie sea urchins, empty of their meat, which cling and prevented the Varech from developing. There was a lot to do.

The Bay Foundation asked for subsidies from state and federal authorities and began hiring divers, gathering 75 volunteers and even working with commercial fishermen to help. Ford stresses that the team did not crush the healthy sea urchins on which people depend for their subsistence. “We were paying the fishermen to put the forest back, then they could then return and fish again from there,” he says.

This is the case with Terry Herzik, a long -standing bear from the Red Sea, which started working with the Foundation in 2012, spending nine hours a day breaking the sea urchins instead of collecting them for sale. “No one has more hours there to eliminate sea urry than Terry,” said Ford, making a gesture towards Herzik’s Boat, The Sun Spot, which is anchored nearby. “We could not have achieved it without him.”

Slowly, methodically, the divers ventured and broke the sea urchins week after week, cleaning the plots. Hitting a sea urchin with a long rock hammer gives “a satisfactory crunch,” says Johnson. It is quick to emphasize that it is manual work, just underwater (and while wearing a bulky diving suit).

Divers talk about their work almost as if they were part of a construction team – it is a repetitive work, but fulfilling, like filling nests in the ocean. “You just press, press, and sometimes you have to reach crevices to take out the sea urchins,” says Taylor. “Your forearms are becoming super tired.”

But the real advantage is to see how fast the Varech returns when the sea urchins are under control – in some cases in a few months. Indeed, the single cell microscopic spores are always in the water column – much like the seeds of a plant transported by the wind – while waiting for the good conditions to fix the reef and begin to grow.

Johnson remembers a place along the coast on which he worked. “In three months, the Varech returned,” he says. “I have never seen such a dense Varech forest – and it was crazy to see how fast it came back.”

With a little varech of my friends

Taylor and Johnson, who both work for Bay Foundation, breathe and transport themselves to the back of the boat. Shaking the seawater of their hair, they describe what they saw in the survey area: tons of fish, a small shark and a forest of green.

“There is still a lot of Varech,” Johnson told Ford, but this is not all good news. “There is still a pocket where sea urchins are developing.” It is always a mystery why certain areas remain restored with the Varech, while others come back in steriles.

The boat goes to another point on the coast, where divers descend again. Here, the Varech forest is so thick that it forms a carpet while keeping the boat in place.

“I don’t know if we need to anchor,” says Ford. “I’m just going to let the seaweed hold me.”

Ford and I lift a sling from Varech on the edge of the boat. It is slippery, rubbery and slightly sticky. On the top, I can see a colony of Bryozoa – tiny invertebrates of the filter feeding that live on the surface of the Varech. Shrimps and adolescent snails also meet on the slings: proof of its importance as a habitat for so many creatures. I pass my fingers along the blades that are just starting to differentiate and grow the bulbs that keep the structure afloat. Even as a relative to fast growing children, it is difficult to imagine the speed at which these algae move – always upwards, always outside. “Everything follows from Varech.” Said Ford.

The project could be a model for other parts of the world where the Varech is struggling. In Tasmania and South Korea, efforts are underway to save the Varech. California’s Santa Barbara channel is also a target for future catering work.

With warmer ocean stains in the future modified in the climate, the Varech could still be in danger – but there are signs full of hope. The sites that have been restored are mainly intact. The research of the foundation shows that the thorny lobster in California has returned to the region, and fish such as the Bass de Varech and the sheep are more abundant than before the start of catering work. Varech also improves the quality of the water, absorbing excess nutrients and maintains the sediments in place in the same way as the trees prevent the earth from sliding after the rains. And the improvements even benefited the precious sea sea sea levels – in the sites where the Varech was restored, the Gonads d’oursin de la Mer Rouge (the precious parts, also known as UNI) weigh 168% more.

Although the sea urchin effect has been devastating, Ford underlines that the Varech has always faced challenges: powerful waves that tear down the seabed from summer temperatures that kill the necessary nutrients to develop. It made the Varech super resilient – and ready to leap at any opportunity to repel. “Part of the reason why we see such a quick response to catering is that the system has evolved to quickly meet beneficial conditions,” he said.

Perhaps the Varech will have a future of fairy tale after all – the one who helps the planet, the people and the coast until the next century.