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Kelp forests are underwater areas with a high density of kelp, which covers a large part of the world's coastlines. Smaller areas of anchored kelp are called kelp beds.
The Giant kelp marine forests of south east Australia is a community extending from the ocean floor to the ocean surface, on a rocky substrate, and has a ‘forest-like’ structure with many organisms occupying its various layers, including pelagic and demersal fishes, sea birds, turtles and marine mammals in addition to the invertebrate ...
Kelp forests are also some of the world's largest carbon sinks, and the Great Southern Reef therefore acts as a buffer against climate change. [7] Unfortunately, an estimated 95% of the giant kelp forests off the coast of Tasmania have died off over the past few decades due higher water temperatures and the long-spined sea urchin. [6] [8]
This "kelp highway hypothesis" suggested that highly productive kelp forests supported rich and diverse marine food webs in nearshore waters, including many types of fish, shellfish, birds, marine mammals, and seaweeds that were similar from Japan to California, Erlandson and his colleagues also argued that coastal kelp forests reduced wave ...
Frequently considered an ecosystem engineer, kelp provides a physical substrate and habitat for kelp forest communities. [50] In algae (Kingdom: Protista), the body of an individual organism is known as a thallus rather than as a plant (Kingdom: Plantae). The morphological structure of a kelp thallus is defined by three basic structural units: [49]
The park also includes a subtidal area where there exists several kelp forests, habitat for Steller sea lions, seals and porpoises, and parts of migratory routes for killer whales, humpback whales, grey whales, basking sharks, and pacific herring. [19] [21]
Macrocystis is a monospecific genus [3] of kelp (large brown algae) with all species now synonymous with Macrocystis pyrifera. It is commonly known as giant kelp or bladder kelp. This genus contains the largest of all the Phaeophyceae or brown algae. Macrocystis has pneumatocysts at the base of its blades.
Kelp forests are a variation of rocky reefs, as the kelp requires a fairly strong and stable substrate which can withstand the loads of repeated waves dragging on the kelp plants. The sea bamboo Ecklonia maxima grows in water which is shallow enough to allow it to reach to the surface with its gas-filled stipes, so that the fronds form a dense ...