Kelp! It needs somebody

CORONA DEL MAR — Kelp is making a comeback.

Pollution from urban runoff and hungry sea urchins helped kill off the once-abundant forests of the long-leafed, greenish-brown sea plant over the last 50 years or so.

Now, a project to regrow kelp off the Orange County coast is starting to show results, thanks to marine biologist Nancy Caruso and a team of volunteer divers who plant young kelp and check on it twice a week.

“Our theory was that we would increase the diversity and abundance [of sea life], and our results definitely show an increase in abundance in the fishes,” Caruso said. “You have to do this stuff a very long time to see any big changes.”

And just as Caruso has been nurturing the kelp, she recently received some encouragement herself. A new partnership with the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach will keep the kelp project going for at least the next several years — and just in time, since a federal grant that has funded it since its 2001 beginning will run out Aug. 31.

“We think it’s an important project, and if you look up and down the coast there are similar programs both to the south and to the north,” aquarium President Jerry Schubel said. “We thought it was too bad if Orange County were the hole left in this coastwide set of programs.”

Caruso and her volunteer divers, who have been working under the aegis of the California Coastkeeper Alliance, maintain kelp beds at 12 sites from Corona del Mar to mid-Laguna Beach.

On a recent trip to kelp beds in Corona del Mar, Caruso and volunteer divers Susy Horowitz and Dennis Poulson rescued 15 kelp plants that had come loose from whatever they were growing on, and they took them to be replanted off Crystal Cove.

“What you’re looking for is what’s called a holdfast,” Poulson said, pointing out a gnarled mass at the plant’s end that resembled a root. In the bags of salvaged kelp the divers found evidence of why this plant is so important — several brittle stars, which look like skinny starfish, are just some of the marine life that finds food, a home, or a place to hide from predators among the kelp’s waving fronds.

That illustrates the circular nature of the problems caused by pollution and other abuses of the ocean. When fish populations decrease, sea urchins multiply. The urchins eat the kelp holdfasts, so the kelp dies, leaving no habitat for the creatures that live in and around it — including fish.

Kelp can help itself, with a little nudge from people. If a drifting plant has an intact holdfast, it can be secured to a reef with rubber bands, which can be removed after a few weeks when the kelp has reattached itself.

Caruso will speak to dive clubs around Southern California to explain how divers can do this.

“There are a lot of areas in Orange County where 90% of the kelp is gone, so there are a lot of areas where divers can do it on their own,” she said.

Education is a big part of the kelp program, and it’s one of the things that attracted the aquarium, Schubel said. Caruso goes to Orange County schools to talk to kids about kelp, and the kids then grow tiny kelp plants that divers later transplant to the ocean. In five years, about 4,000 students have been taught to grow kelp.

“The whole idea behind this project is to create stewardship for the ocean in the community,” Caruso said. “If it was just a bunch of scientists out here, there’s nobody on the beach to even see us doing this.”

But the science is part of it, too. Caruso is trying to show that replanting the kelp is working, using control sites where no kelp is planted. So far she seems to be proven right.

“Man, there’s a lot of kelp down there,” she said, coming up after a dive — and she noticed it’s growing a little farther from the ocean’s surface than in other years, which is also a good sign.

The kelp seems to be doing fine, and the aquarium partnership will go a long way toward sustaining the program. Schubel said he’s committed $25,000 this year and up to $75,000 in 2008.

After that, Caruso and the aquarium will continue to work with schools and other organizations, and they’ll seek grants and other funding. That may be where Caruso’s job is the hardest.

“Nobody funds marine restoration because nobody’s doing it,” she said. “I guess I’m the precedent, and everybody that comes after me gets to get money.”