Kelp

Thank you so much for joining.

And last but not least is Aaron Egger, Programme Director at the Kelp Forest Alliance.

Aaron and his team have just released the second State of the World's Kelp Forest Report, which found that around 60% of assessed regions show some degree of degradation, but also that the field is gathering momentum.

So Aaron, welcome to this week's roundtable session.

Hey Rob, thanks for having me, happy to be here.

And what are your thoughts and feelings around that? And maybe what's some of the conversations around the ocean that are sort of enticing or encouraging you the most?

I think the two answers are very much connected, and there's sort of some recognition that's taking place, and that recognition is what really excites me.

So I'm working with the Kelp Forest Alliance, which is a global group of people doing local kelp forest conservation, restoration, stewardship.

I thought it was so cool.

The thing that kind of killed it for me is the fact that I live in Hawaii here and the kelp farming in Hawaii is actually very, very difficult.

Kelp farming is easy to do in places where basically You have murky water.

Clear water basically means that it's pretty devoid of nutrients, a lot of which kelp need to survive.

And so it's actually really hard to grow kelp here in Hawaii.

It's a little bit more wearable.

But it's this Kelp watch, this Kelp Aquus.

I have one on the way.

to me right now that I'm going to be able to photograph, um, hoping in the next, next couple of weeks.

That became, in effect, a campaign to raise awareness through the local community about what we were trying to achieve.

The narrative became more about rewilding that bit of the sea, restoring the kelp forest.

It turned what was a boring-sounding nearshore trawling bylaw review into a Help the Kelp campaign, which are two very different ways of looking at the same thing.

But it was amazing in the end, amazing.

Sarah Cunliffe, who I'd been speaking to because she was concerned about illegal shellfishing in Chichester Harbour, and it just so happened she makes natural history documentaries as a living.

So I would soak seeds in that.

I would use kelp.

Kelp's amazing.

I would be brewing up some good things and adding mycorrhizal fungi to the roots of things.

And this was a great site.

This is Mariculture Minute with another edition of Kelp the Boat.

I'm Jeremiah Murphy.

Alaska Senator Dan Sullivan is up for re-election.

A lot of the politicians have been mentioning them with my question about what their favorite seaweed dish is.

I'll, of course, add a link again to them in the shell notes.

This has been Kelp the Vote, a production of Mariculture Minute, your source for Alaskan mariculture politics.

Elections are in November.

Excuse me.

We talked to her early out beginning of her trip, and now it's, it's onto other things.

Chapter eight of my book, Forests of the Sea, is titled Kelp Is the New Coral, which is also the slogan for Blue Frontier's Kelp Education and Learning Project.

For 30 years, the nonprofit Reef Check organization has been encouraging and developing citizen science projects to protect both coral reefs and kelp forest around the world.

Today, we're talking with its executive director, Jan Freiwald.

So that really incredible program to bring people that normally wouldn't get access into these areas.

It's, it's great in terms of indigenous culture and networking and getting co-management over these marine protected areas.

And the 10 years that you ran the California Kelp Program also overlapped with what they call the Blob, the marine heatwave that took down so much of the kelp.

And what was that experience? I mean, when you started, it was, like, protecting a marine park and, and just what was your experience over that period?