Collaborators: Dr. Patrick Martone, UBC

A pattern observed in recent restoration initiatives is that naturally-occuring fronds of Desmarestia (known as "acid kelp" for the high concentrations of sulphuric acid in its tissues) can protect outplanted Bull Kelp and Giant Kelp from grazing by sea urchins. This project builds on a pilot lead by Clay Steell in 2024 to culture species in this genus, for which little precedence exists. Controllable and scalable Desmarestia culturing offers another pathway to recovering and protecting kelp forests threatened by urchin overgrazing and imbalanced ecosystems.

Collaborators: Oak Bay High School

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.

Collaborators: Dr. Christopher Neufeld, Brian Timmer, and Aneri Garg

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.