this lecture is a brief introduction to kelp forests and the Salish Sea specifically talking about two of the main kelp species we have here in the sato sheet these are both images of near assistance the volkl we also have the giant kelp or macrocystis which we'll learn about the differences of the two and how they help form very critical and very productive habitats here in the Salish Sea this graphic on the top is image up on the top shows the two main species of kelp we have here in the Salish Sea on the left is neurosis this lukina or the bull kelp bull kelp is in kind of Puget Sound area and more inland waters one of the more common species that you'll see for kelp which is easily identifiable by this large bulb and then kind of hair like blades coming off of that compared to macrocystis profile which has a Stipe with many new mattis's for these kind of gas field bulbs with blades coming off of that so these we frequently see washed up on shore and here's an image of a singular one down below they're both brown algae and they're both vitally important to the sea of the sea they are primary producers so they're converting sunlight into energy they're both very fast growing algae macrocystis prefere is frequently cited as the fastest growing algae in the world when it can grow up to two feet per day they're both typically found about 15 feet deep down to a max 100 or 120 feet of depth now for these two grow at a 120 feet of depth you have you would imagine that the water quality has to be quite good the clarity of the water has to be good for light to penetrate that deep down to about photosynthesis to occur so both of these species are very susceptible to being light limited which makes them susceptible to water pollution specifically things like stormwater runoff that often increases the turbidity of the water which is just a word meaning makes the water less clear and harder to see through so both of these species require really clear water they also require a fair amount of nutrients and so they have to have fresh nutrients brought in from the deep ocean to survive they're pretty interesting organisms that they grow so quick and they're actually they're algae they're not a traditional vascular plant but even as such they can move nutrients from down below to up above just like a vascular plant can move nutrients from its roots to its leaves kelp can do the same thing which is really important because in the ocean the water stratified so the upper part of the water column might not have a lot of nutrients but that's where all your that's where all your blades are that are absorbing energy that are absorbing light to photosynthesize so those are the parts of your the the algae that need the most nutrients however most of the nutrients live in the deeper part of the ocean down here so they can actually move nutrients up and down which is pretty fascinating we'll go over a couple of terms that we use when we're talking about kelp starting at the bottom one is to hold fast these aren't roots but it holds fast is a root like structure typically the hold fast is stuck to a rock or some sort of hard object for it to for it to stay anchored and so it's really important for these things to be anchor they typically live in areas with a fair amount of current and so they typically anchor to either a bed they're our bottom that's all rock or if it is a sandy or substrate there'll be rocks within that that they attach to moving up from the whole task we have the Stipe thus type here is effectively the stem it's like the sort of long backbone part of the kelp on the neurosis this this terminates with this large bold here called a new matte assist they're actually full of carbon monoxide it's just a gas filled ladder that helps keep it afloat attached to that are a number of blades here and so on the neurosis this you go holdfast Stipe the Matt assist and then a series of blades and for the neuro systems it's kind of fork to kind of bifurcated here and there can be up to 10 or 15 or more blades attached to the numata system now macrocystis are a fair amount are fundamentally the same but the shape wise they're a lot different I think they're actually very beautiful if you look at this image down here so here we have our holdfast just the same in a nurse type and the Stipe can split down here and have multiple states coming up off of one hold facets terminates a bit lower and then here instead of one large pneumatic cyst we have a series of the mattis's each of these are gas filled bladders that help keep the algae floating and then each of these new mattis's has one blade attached to it so on macrocystis we have many new Matt assists each new Matt assist has one blade attached compared to a Nero Cistus where we have one new Matt assist attached which has coming out of it mini blades both species this diagram will show up but both species have sporophylls down here and we'll talk of bit more about the reproductive pattern for Crick helps it's pretty fascinating that they reproduce a lot differently than you know terrestrial plants or other things we might be familiar with here's a diagram showing the reproduction of this images meant to show macrocystis it's similar for narrow sisters I'm only going to talk about one of them because they more or less do the same thing so the adult algae that we see when we're out on the water or we see washed up on the beach is referred to as the sporophyte so this is the life stage of kelp that produces spores so these spores here are free swimming zou spores these are not eggs and sperm these are these are free swimming spores that then land on the on the ocean bottom and then they either produce either female or male gametes so they these spores that float around the ocean land somewhere if they're male then they grow and start releasing sperm if they're female they grow and start producing eggs typically what happens here is the female produces one egg and then waits for a sperm to come and fertilize that egg and then at that point it becomes a microscopic sport so then it ultimately grows up to being the big spore fight so it's a bit different where they're not producing eggs and sperm they're producing xot spores that then land and then produce gametes and those gametes go on fertilized and then grow into the large plant or Vasari large algae and an algae then produces Oh spores that then land and then depending on a variety of sort of unknown conditions will either become male or female gametophyte and those gametophyte is depending on whether they're male or female produce other eggs or sperm this is called alteration of generations meaning if we just have a sporophyte it doesn't make more sporophytes you need to have a surviving sporophyte and a surviving gametophyte and both of these life stages are important you can imagine in the winter if the sporophytes get knocked out but the Kamino fights are still there pumping out eggs and sperm that's creating the next generation of sporophytes that will then grow throughout the summer release a bunch of those spores that then land on them on the bottom of the ocean which could have been dose and create a bunch more gametes so it's a pretty unique life history strategy that we see in kelp this is some examples of a kelp forest now there's a variety of different looks of kelp forest but here we have our narrow sisters our bulk up forests this is more or less what we would expect to see in areas like Neah Bay some of the rocky areas in the San Juans Gulf Islands areas that have bedrock a decent amount of current hearings of the water quality is pretty good the clarity is pretty good and then your narrow sisters has holdfast attached to the benthos shooting up the water column growing with the blades coming off the amount of system here is a macrocystis kelp forest now this is appears to be soft substrate right it appears to be sandy but there's actually a hard rock down here as well so they're attached to Hard Rock that's overlaying by sand here you've got blades going up the entire or most of the vertical structure of the coat fundamentally they kind of operate in the same way you can have overstory an understory helps just like you would in a forest so really these are frequently referred to as the rainforests of the sea because they're so productive both from a carbon fixing standpoint right they're fixing a lot of carbon dioxide creating food for other organisms doing a massive amount of primary productivity but they're also supporting a variety of other organisms specifically whenever we create a three-dimensional structure in what was previously a two dimensional space biomass and biodiversity increases so I'm going to jump back to the prior slide really quick let's imagine this macrocystis cut forest without kelp what would you see a bunch of sand not really much else in this case of the Nero Cistus well we still have a rocky rocky bent dose so there would be some understory kelps and things like that growing but not nearly the diversity of other species that are consuming either the kelp directly or consuming the things that are consuming the kelp additionally this is providing shade and protection from other predators as providing some structure so imagine this without kelp more or less a SAN flat not the most interesting place in the world we have a healthy kelp forest then we have little nooks and crannies for fish to hide in these fish are picking off isopods and other things that are living on the kelp eating the kelp are eating the film on the cup and then in turn there's bigger fish teeth the smaller fish and so on and so forth sort of the you know circle of life in the ocean but without kelp we lose all of that the same way you could think about a rainforest if you cut down all the trees it's not nearly as interesting of a place so kelp are foundational species that really define the marine ecosystems with a loss of kelp we lose many other species thinking back to the maiden store I like to think and and the story says that she can be seen in the water her hair can be flowing in the water deception past they're talking about neurosis this blades that these blades particularly narrow systems are at the surface and they wave back and forth and it does look like long hair and so as we lose the maiden if we lose kelp then we lose a massive amount of productivity in the ocean a lot of that productivity is creating food different fissures that are consumed rockfish lingcod as well as other things like urchins and abalone other herbivore snails things like that so super super vital and really if we lose kelp and our ecosystems are quite endangered as well as if you've walked on the beach you might be familiar with this scene of a big pile of kelp on the beach we call this wrack it just means dead things that are washed up on the beach now in this case it's primarily Nero Cistus the bull kelp and this bull kelp washes up on the beach and while it might be in knowing she have to walk around it or it could be stinky or covered in a little jumping isopods it's providing a massive amount of nutrients to the near shore so kelp is providing nutrients to the ecosystem it lives in the kelp forests that's also exporting nutrients to other areas some of this kelp doesn't wash up on the beach some but washes down in the deeper ocean and there it provides a valuable viable nutrition for the animals that live down there so kelp was massively important for the cup forests but also the surrounding ecosystems both deeper and shallower and Puget Sound and say the sea we've seen a big reduction of kelp forests particularly bulk help over the past few years so many groups could you sound Restoration Fund amongst them the sandwich nation many other tribes are really concerned about this loss of bull kelp bull kelp both is a traditional food because it's consumed you can dry it you can use it for cooking the both the blades and the actually the Stipe as well you can use it for creating tools you can put you wood or iron wood in it and then heat that up over a fire and it'll steam that wood then you can bend it as well as again the blades being consumed in the modern there's a couple pickled kelp recipes as well you can take the stipes and cut it up and make pickles there's a lot of use for the blades both commercially as well toothpaste and ice cream are kind of common examples as well as some spot-on kelp for herring which we might touch on later but they have a massive human value from that context there's also the symbolism with the maiden as well as providing a massive ecosystem service and so we've seen a massive decline of bulk health in the Salish Sea and a number of groups have tried to restore bull kelp and what they're doing is actually growing bulk help in the lab and then transplant it out in the environment to try to see if it'll take and it's a very it sounds kind of easy like oh yeah whatever I could do that with my tomatoes but it's a fair amount harder with both kelp both because they're pretty finicky and working in the ocean tends to be a lot harder than working in your backyard so there's a fair amount of concern about bulk help and some work to protect it I think it's a really interesting species and it's that umbrella species that when you have a healthy kelp forest you have a healthy food web and you have a very productive ecosystem and so it's definitely an indicator of overall environmental health with that high schoo thank you