Alex Coolman
LITTLE CORONA -- A small patch of air bubbles breaks the surface of the
ocean and a moment later, Gordon Lehman, decked out in full scuba gear,
comes up from the deep.
In one gloved hand he holds the golden, glossy leaves of o7 Macrocystis
pyriferaf7 , a California Giant Kelp plant. And though it's somewhat
difficult to read Lehman's expression behind his translucent facemask, he
appears to be smiling.
"There's a lot of kelp down there," he exclaims. "I didn't mean to stay
down so long, but it looks really good."
The plants -- there are about 100 of them near a small reef 100 yards off
the rocky shoreline -- are growing on the sea bottom because of a program
started six months ago by Orange County CoastKeeper, an environmental
group that focuses on ocean water quality.
With the help of Lehman, who is a scuba instructor and the co-founder of
an Anaheim company that focuses on kelp-growing technology, the group is
trying to accomplish something ambitious: restoring Orange County's
once-abundant Giant Kelp forests to their former glory.
The forests can use the help. Though there is almost no kelp off Newport
Beach today, the coastline was once densely carpeted with the towering,
graceful plants.
"The kelp resource here in Orange County is at about the lowest it's been
in the 26 years I've been teaching at Orange Coast College," said OCC
Marine Science professor Dennis Kelly. "When I got out of college in the
1960s, we had a very large, almost continuous kelp forest -- not only in
Orange County, but all the way up and down the state. We're now down to
very, very little kelp."
The forests have died off in recent decades for several reasons.
Pollution and sediment, warmer water temperatures during El Nino years
and the declining population of sea otters, who feed on the animals that
feed on kelp, have all played a part, Kelly said.
To an ordinary beachgoer, the loss of the plants might not seem to be a
big problem. But Garry Brown, the director of CoastKeeper, emphasized
that the denuded seas are also less hospitable to marine life that depend
on kelp for breeding grounds.
"People don't ask what happened to the seaweed," Brown said. "They ask,
'How come there's no great fishing?' "
CoastKeeper's reforestation program aims, over the long run, to reverse
the trend of kelp loss.
In custom-designed plastic carts that can be easily transported, Lehman
cultivates kelp spores. The tiny organisms affix to small pieces of tile
and, after a few months, grow large enough to be transplanted into the
