Kelp

In a converted shipping container perched oceanside in Ketch Harbour, N.S., a group of people gather to peer into tanks filled with fuzzy pieces of gravel. The rocks are covered with tiny blades of sugar kelp. Soon, the squares of steel mesh they're fixed to will be suspended in the water at a kelp farming demonstration site in Mahone Bay, in the hopes of safeguarding the future Nova Scotia's kelp beds.It's an effort by scientists, conservationists and a West Coast company working together on the restoration technique for…

Starre Vartan: I love a short cold-water swim in Puget Sound in Washington State. I start from a rocky shore near my home. Vartan: If I kept swimming just another 100 feet out, I could dive a few feet down through these clear waters into an underwater forest where animals such as shrimp, crabs and small fish like lingcod, rockfish—and maybe even salmon—like to live. Vartan: This is Scientific American’s Science, Quickly. I’m Starre Vartan. Kelp forests are made up of thick, undulating ribbons of brown algae that…

Although salmon farms help take pressure off wild stocks, the penned fish do produce a lot of waste which is concentrated at one location. A new farm is exploring a solution to that problem, by raising salmon and kelp in adjacent pens.The experimental aquaculture operation is located in the municipality of Steigen, in Norway's Norland county. Norwegian fish farming companies Folla Alger and Cermaq are collaborating on the salmon aspect of the project, while the SINTEF Ocean research group is responsible for the kelp.The…

This story was co-published with the Monterey Herald and supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center. It’s 1988. The Monterey Bay Aquarium is four years old, and so am I. It is my favorite place on earth, and the sea otters are my favorite animal. During a presentation, an aquarium employee tells me that the southern sea otter has more than one million hairs per square inch (about 155,000 per square centimeter) of its body. “Who counted all that hair?” I wonder. While the southern sea otter captures the attention of…