why kelp?
Summary
Kelp is a climate champion for a few key reasons. It grows fast—up to 100 feet in months, unlike slow-growing trees, making it a quick solution to carbon capture. Kelp forests are biodiversity hotspots, providing essential habitats for marine life and helping depleted ecosystems recover. They also protect coastlines by buffering waves, preventing erosion, and purifying waters by absorbing excess nutrients. Most importantly, kelp is a powerful carbon sink, rapidly capturing CO₂ and lowering greenhouse gas levels in the atmosphere. While trees work on land, kelp is doing heavy lifting underwater, giving both marine and terrestrial ecosystems a fighting chance.
There are a lot (and I mean, a lot!) of ways to battle climate change. So, why would I pick kelp? Where does this interest come from?
A few important reasons:
Kelp grows quickly
Trees are incredible carbon sinks, but here’s the catch—they grow slow. This slow growth has even caused some setbacks in reforestation efforts. Take eucalyptus: it’s fast-growing, which makes it tempting for large-scale planting, but it’s also highly flammable, invasive, and can push out native species. Kelp, on the other hand, grows to over 100 feet in just a few months, while eucalyptus can take around 15 years to reach maturity. That’s an enormous difference in time when we’re racing against climate change.
Fish love kelp
A healthy kelp forest is like a bustling underwater city. It’s a nursery for juvenile fish and a habitat for an entire community of marine life—from invertebrates to sea otters and even marine mammals. Kelp forests provide food, protection, and shelter for countless species. Between 2014 and 2016, a marine heatwave wiped out over 90% of the kelp cover along a 200-mile stretch of Northern California’s coast. This dramatic loss turned vibrant habitats into “urchin barrens”—essentially underwater deserts dominated by purple sea urchins and almost devoid of other life. A thriving kelp forest can restore these marine ecosystems, helping fish populations rebound and supporting biodiversity.
Kelp protects coastlines
Kelp forests are natural protectors, shielding coastlines from erosion by absorbing the impact of waves. Acting like underwater barriers, kelp helps stabilize shorelines, preventing the loss of beaches and coastal habitats. For communities vulnerable to storms, kelp is a valuable ally, naturally reducing wave energy and offering a buffer against extreme weather.
Kelp purifies ocean waters
Kelp is also nature’s water filter. Its dense holdfasts anchor sediments to the ocean floor, helping keep coastal waters clear and stable. It’s a nutrient sponge, too, soaking up excess nitrogen and phosphorus from agricultural runoff and urban pollution. By absorbing these excess nutrients, kelp forests help prevent harmful algal blooms, which can create oxygen-depleted dead zones and disrupt marine life.
Most importantly, kelp is a major carbon sink
Most crucially, kelp is a powerful carbon sink that directly helps combat climate change. As kelp grows, it absorbs large amounts of CO₂ through photosynthesis, capturing carbon that would otherwise remain in the atmosphere. This process can happen astonishingly quickly: a kelp forest can take in several tons of carbon per acre each year, storing it safely within its fronds and transferring some of it to the ocean floor when the kelp dies and sinks. This rapid carbon absorption means that kelp helps reduce the overall CO₂ concentration in the atmosphere, addressing one of the root causes of global warming.
The impact is significant. By pulling excess CO₂ from the atmosphere and ocean, kelp forests lessen the greenhouse effect, which in turn helps stabilize global temperatures and mitigate extreme weather patterns. Not only that, but kelp’s carbon-storing ability can complement land-based carbon sinks like forests, adding another layer of resilience in the global fight against climate change.
So while trees work their magic on land, underwater, it’s kelp that’s capturing CO₂, slowing global warming, and giving marine—and even terrestrial—ecosystems a chance to thrive.
