Where is kelp

Web design and content by Flow Communications. Search Two Oceans Aquarium Toggle navigation. Home Blog What is kelp? Everything you need to know about this marvellous seaweed. South African kelp How does it grow? Kelp Forests are critical ecosystems Can you eat kelp? Why does kelp matter? How can you protect kelp? Let's take a look at everything you need to know about kelp: All dripping in tangles green, Cast up by a lonely sea; If purer for that, O Weed, Bitterer, too, are ye?

What is kelp? Photo courtesy rebecca. The distribution of kelp forests. Stipe is hollow and full of gas to help it float. Thick, straplike fronds that grow from a bulb near the surface. Fronds are rippled, with spines on the edges. The base of each frond has a small gas-filled bladder to help it float.

Stipe is short and solid with no gas pockets. Its fronds are oddly shaped and covered in spines. Stipe is stiff and solid, growing up to 5m. Stipe ends in a single large fan-shaped frond. The frond is so long that it can hang down and touch the ground, enabling it to sweep away herbivores in the swell. Like those systems, though, kelp forests provide important three-dimensional, underwater habitat that is home to hundreds or thousands of species of invertebrates, fishes, and other algae.

Some species aggregate and spawn in kelp forests or utilize these areas as juvenile nursery habitat. Large predatory species of sharks and marine mammals are known to hunt in the long corridors that form in kelp forests between rows of individual plants.

Though kelp forests are important ecosystems wherever they occur, they are more dynamic than the other systems mentioned above. In other words, they can disappear and reappear based on the oceanographic conditions and the population sizes of their primary herbivores.

Warmer than normal summers and seasonal changes to currents that bring fewer nutrients to kelp forests both sometimes occurring naturally combine to weaken kelps and threaten their survival in some years. Strong individual storms can wipe out large areas of kelp forest, by ripping the kelp plants from the seafloor. Large gatherings of sea urchins a primary herbivore in kelp forests can prevent kelp plants from growing large enough to form forests.

In ideal conditions, kelp can grow up to 18 inches per day, and in stark contrast to the colorful and slow-growing corals, the giant kelp canopies tower above the ocean floor. Like trees in a forest, these giant algae provide food and shelter for many organisms. Also like a terrestrial forest, kelp forests experience seasonal changes. Kelp forests can be seen along much of the west coast of North America. Kelp are large brown algae that live in cool, relatively shallow waters close to the shore.

In the kelp beds in the Gulf of Maine, the dominant kelps are horsetail help, sugar kelp, and sea colander. The Red alga known as Irish moss is a major component of the understory. Limpets and periwinkles, as well as sea urchins, feed on the kelps. In the understory, amphipods, isopods, shrimps, and young crabs comprise the motile invertebrate community.

Sessile invertebrates include hydroids and tunicates that grow on the kelps and red algae. Predators include lobsters, crabs, sea stars, and fish—including winter flounder, haddock, and wrasse. Sea ducks feed on invertebrates and small fish.

Among those visiting the kelp beds are Red-breasted mergansers, Common Goldeneye, and Long-tailed Duck.