The Aquarium of the Pacific is taking a proactive approach to the rapidly warming climate and water temperatures that may one day threaten our way of life.
A pink illuminated refrigerator within the Aquarium holds 1,400 samples of Nereocystis luetkeana kelp, more commonly known as bull kelp, in a conservation project they are hoping will be able to restore local oceanic ecosystems and combat climate change.
Bull kelp is commonly found in Northern America and is on the coast of most California beaches. The average Californian probably knows bull kelp as the slimy, greenish orange-ish plant that washes up on shores or sticks to swimmers in the ocean, but its importance in our world cannot be understated.
Kelp forests, along with other marine plants, account for every other breath of oxygen that humans take. They also act as a home to thousands of ocean species, drawing wildlife to our coasts and contributing to the ocean’s food chain.
Coastlines with kelp in front of them also have an extra level of protection against wave and erosion activity that occurs over time. This is especially important for cities like Long Beach, with neighborhoods like Alamitos Beach and Belmont Shore just off the coast.
Bull kelp has been rapidly declining in recent years due to climate change and other disruptions to the ocean’s food web. Since 2008, Northern California’s bull kelp levels have declined by 95%, according to the Aquarium, which they hope to fight with the help of national partners.
A refridgerator filled with rows and rows of vials containing gametophyte’s of the Nereocystis luetkeana kelp are held in stasis with the red lights at the Aquarium of the Pacific on March 7, 2023. The kelp, more commonly known as Bull Kelp, is a edible variety that is found all across the California Coastline. (Richard H. Grant | Signal Tribune) 
Senior Aquarist J.J. Soski holds a vial of the living bull kelp that is being kept in a stasis-like environment at the Aquarium of the Pacific in a “seed bank” for conservation efforts of this edible variety of kelp on March 7, 2023. (Richard H. Grant | Signal Tribune)
“This is an insurance or protection for future changes that might be coming,” said Jennie Dean, the Aquarium’s education and conservation coordinator. “So unlike some of our other work, where there is direct photogenic, exciting engagement with wild habitats, this one is a little bit more behind the scenes, but very important because of that future potential. We’re really thinking ahead to how we can be proactive to future changes.”
The Aquarium’s kelp conservation project is in partnership with the University of Wisconsin and the California Sea Grant. The goal is not only to help restore local diverse ecosystems, but to explore kelp’s genetic diversity to eventually breed plants that are more resistant to the warming waters.
Each day, two members from the Aquarium who received specialized training check on the 1,400 kelp babes held in small vials to ensure they are stored in the correct temperature and lighting conditions.
“Each of the collaborators serves a different role, and ours is in maintenance of these very important precursors to future kelp: the genetic staples,” Dean said. “Other facilities are able to source samples but other partners aren’t, and they might be serving in a role of analysis of the genetic material or in thinking about policy.”
The Aquarium started the project in 2022, when they received a facility to properly store the kelp. Adult kelp plants produce spores which settle onto the ocean floor. These spores can be male or female, and as they settle they eventually become male or female gametophytes.
This is the state that the Aquarium keeps the kelp in, after germination but before fertilization, Dean explained. They will be kept in this state “indefinitely,” so that whenever the aquarium chooses to complete the fertilization stage “to create bull kelp adults,” they can choose to do so.
It’s a more “traditional” process than one would expect, Dean said, where the male gametophytes will produce a sperm and the female gametophytes will produce an egg, and then they combine.
The Aquarium bull kelp team anticipates that within a few days, the two gametophytes will combine and create fresh, new “baby kelp.” But until there is a need for the production of more bull kelp, they’ll stay in their current frozen state.
“I wouldn’t say that [the decline of kelp] needs to get worse, but maybe that our understanding needs to improve,” Dean said. “So what we want first is to have a better understanding of the type of diversity that will thrive under these changing conditions. Maybe there’s a certain genetic profile that is better suited to warmer waters, which we’re starting to see off of our coasts as one of the causes of decline. “
The Aquarium estimates it could be years of storing the material “before any sort of release would happen out into the wild,” Dean said.
The kelp conservation project is just one of a dozen conservation projects the Aquarium is invested in, and may reestablish entire forests filled with diverse ocean creatures in the years to come.