CORONA DEL MAR — Kelp is making a comeback.
Pollution from urban runoff and hungry sea urchins helped kill off the once-abundant forests of the long-leafed, greenish-brown sea plant over the last 50 years or so.
Now, a project to regrow kelp off the Orange County coast is starting to show results, thanks to marine biologist Nancy Caruso and a team of volunteer divers who plant young kelp and check on it twice a week.
"Our theory was that we would increase the diversity and abundance [of sea life], and our results definitely show an increase in abundance in the fishes," Caruso said. "You have to do this stuff a very long time to see any big changes."
And just as Caruso has been nurturing the kelp, she recently received some encouragement herself. A new partnership with the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach will keep the kelp project going for at least the next several years — and just in time, since a federal grant that has funded it since its 2001 beginning will run out Aug. 31.
"We think it's an important project, and if you look up and down the coast there are similar programs both to the south and to the north," aquarium President Jerry Schubel said. "We thought it was too bad if Orange County were the hole left in this coastwide set of programs."
Caruso and her volunteer divers, who have been working under the aegis of the California Coastkeeper Alliance, maintain kelp beds at 12 sites from Corona del Mar to mid-Laguna Beach.
On a recent trip to kelp beds in Corona del Mar, Caruso and volunteer divers Susy Horowitz and Dennis Poulson rescued 15 kelp plants that had come loose from whatever they were growing on, and they took them to be replanted off Crystal Cove.
"What you're looking for is what's called a holdfast," Poulson said, pointing out a gnarled mass at the plant's end that resembled a root. In the bags of salvaged kelp the divers found evidence of why this plant is so important — several brittle stars, which look like skinny starfish, are just some of the marine life that finds food, a home, or a place to hide from predators among the kelp's waving fronds.
That illustrates the circular nature of the problems caused by pollution and other abuses of the ocean. When fish populations decrease, sea urchins multiply. The urchins eat the kelp holdfasts, so the kelp dies, leaving no habitat for the creatures that live in and around it — including fish.
