Scientists from NOAA’s National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science Kasitsna Bay Laboratory joined a week-long mission to investigate the recent expansion of giant kelp forests in waters surrounding Kodiak Island, Alaska.
Bull kelp, the predominant canopy kelp in the region, has been largely replaced by giant kelp in the last couple of decades. While both kelp species provide habitat, protection, and food for aquatic species and marine mammals, the cause and consequences of this shift are unknown.
Kasitsna Bay Laboratory scientists joined teams from the Cook Inlet Regional Citizens Advisory Council, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Archipelago Marine Research, and NOAA Diving Program along with support from the R/V Steadfast and ShoreZone program. Teams identified giant and bull kelp forests spanning hundreds of kilometers of coastline, and selectively collected aerial drone imagery, underwater SCUBA video transects, eDNA, and ecological parameters to help determine physical and environmental factors that could be facilitating the expansion.
The team hopes to use the resulting imagery and ecological data to characterize the forests, provide predictive trends in ongoing expansion, and determine the possible ecological impacts when shifting from bull kelp to giant kelp dominated systems in the region.
This work is part of an ongoing project to map nearshore habitats in Kachemak Bay and is supported by the Coastal Zone Management Act.
