Help Kelp Help Us

Seaweed, including kelp, is increasingly recognized as a vital piece of the jigsaw of solutions to resolving greenhouse gas control (including reducing methane emissions from farmed animals) and oceanic habitat maintenance to meet biodiversity goals. Because the macroalgal kelp stores carbon far away from the shore, it is less likely to be disturbed and returned to the atmosphere, compared to mangrove and seagrass.

An article and some of the books and podcasts that help explain this are below.

First up Cayne Layton describes the ability of giant kelp to grow up to 50cm (almost 2 ft) in a day and investigates whether replanting is a feasible way to reverse the decline of kelp forests (Australian kelp forest having been estimated to have declined by 95% since the 1970’s). Find out more here

Sylvia Hurlimann wrote “How Kelp Naturally Combats Global Climate Change” an article written as a third-year graduate student in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University.

 

Expanding beyond kelp Tim Flannery describes how seaweed can help in the book The Climate Cure: Solving the Climate Emergency in the Era of COVID-19 published by Text Publishing and you can here a short podcast on the Australia’s ABC Science Show podcast here

As a collaboration between artists and science the Seaweed Forests Festival exposed the beauty, wonder and potential of the underwater world. Hear more here

Some of the potential ways for seaweed species to help us is outlined in a podcast here