Giant kelp supports a number of species in the ocean and on the beach. It’s plentiful along the central coast, especially in the Santa Barbara Channel.
UCSB researcher Kyle Emery said giant kelp is an extremely important foundation species for the food web on our sandy beaches.
“When you see a pile of kelp on the beach, if you flip that pile of kelp over, you’ll most likely see beach hoppers and flies and other small invertebrates explode out of this kelp pile,” he said.
Emery said insects and crustaceans eat the kelp directly.
“Then we have a number of other organisms like small mammals and shorebirds that then eat those kelp consumers,” he said.
Giant kelp grows in the rocky reefs in the Santa Barbara Channel where it supports fish and other marine life. When it washes up on the sand, it’s called kelp wrack.
A team of scientists, including Emery, conducted a long-term study on the connections of kelp forests to sandy beach ecosystems.
Focused on five beaches in Santa Barbara County, they analyzed kelp data, reviewed satellite images, and counted shorebirds. They also studied wave action and beach width at the various sites.
Emery said patterns emerged showing that events happen in a cohesive way. They found that systems were in-sync in kelp forests, wrack, and shorebird populations.
For example, “When shorebirds are present on our beaches, their populations tend to scale with the amount of wrack on a beach,” he said.
Emery said the beach ecosystem is dependent on kelp wrack, so studying this relationship can help us understand how disturbances or climate shifts might impact the coastal food web.
The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.
