The shallows are where the magic happens

WP1 is back in the water for the May campaign and diving in some pretty spectacular underwater forests!

Seems like we were just here sampling in March, but a lot of changes have happened to the kelp since then. The plants have grown an entire new blade in the last 2 months! That is 50 to 70 cm of growth in the last 8 weeks. Amazing productivity.

We have also added another task to all our stations: measuring how quickly tagged pieces of kelp move out of the forest. We originally thought that freely moving pieces would move quickly away from from these exposed reefs. But, most of the drift is actually retained in the kelp forest or accumulates at the border. Urchins seem to be playing a key role in this process.