Kelp forests are vulnerable to high temperatures, with increasingly frequent and extreme marine heatwaves driving habitat loss across wide swaths of the coast. This project builds on recent team member research on thermal priming, in which kelp gametophytes are exposed to temperature extremes during their incubation period, which may give restored kelp sporophytes resilience to higher temperatures when planted in the ocean. Blue Futures Kelp is working with students from Oak Bay High School in Victoria, BC to pilot this method in Giant Kelp while offering an experiential learning program, the results of which can inform future restoration and research activities.

As kelp forests respond to climate warming, we've found that populations of kelp growing at the edge of a species' range are often the most vulnerable to marine heatwaves or other environmental disturbance. Simultaneously, many of these populations hold unique genotypes that could be the key to future kelp forest restoration in a warmer ocean, presenting an urgent need to conserve these genotypes through long-term gametophyte cultures.

In this project, funded by an Ocean Action Grant from Ocean Wise, Blue Futures Kelp will collect spores and create gametophyte cultures from the southernmost range-edge population of Giant Kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) on the Canadian side of the Salish Sea, located near Sooke in southern Vancouver Island, in the unceded territory of the T'Sou'ke First Nation. These gametophyte cultures can be held indefinitely, and will safeguard this population's unique genotype in the event it disappears from the wild due to climate warming or other disturbances.