Moreover, north of 29 degrees North latitude, kelp forests were either gone entirely, or 90 percent decimated. “When the heat wave happened, all of those northern kelp forests were basically wiped out in a couple of months,” Wernberg says. And the cause was the same – what the scientists call an “extreme marine heat wave.”“Some of the same types of drivers are behind all of this, and I think this really emphasizes the manifestation of these climate-driven events. Now, however, a team of researchers has revealed that another Australian coastal ecosystem that gets less attention – Australia’s kelp-dominated Great Southern Reef, which covers a huge expanse along its more temperate southern and southwestern coast – saw an equally dramatic ecosystem upheaval five years ago. Many Americans will be familiar with the towering kelp forests off the coast of California, where these enormous organisms can grow to be more than 30 metres tall.

Source: National Post July 08, 2016 13:30 UTC