To boost conservation of kelp forests, start by naming them (commentary)

Résumé détaillé

Beneath the coppery fronds of the only floating bamboo kelp forest in the world, a creature shapeshifts across the reef. A tuberculate cuttlefish (Sepia tuberculata) has just…

Beneath the coppery fronds of the only floating bamboo kelp forest in the world, a creature shapeshifts across the reef. A tuberculate cuttlefish (Sepia tuberculata) has just escaped a predator using “pseudomorph-ink” — a ‘false body’ strategy of emitting ink clouds that resemble its shape — while the actual animal jets away in the opposite direction. Once hidden under a rock or in a crevice, its superb camouflage and mimicry will protect it from detection.

This animal lives in the Great African Seaforest, which stretches for more than 1,300 kilometers (just over 800 miles) from South Africa to Namibia. This ecosystem is just one of many such kelp forests across the world that together house thousands of kinds of creatures all hiding, breeding, sheltering and feeding.

Fringing a third of the world’s coastlines in temperate and polar waters, kelp forests are one of the most biodiverse nearshore ecosystems on our planet and are probably as biologically important as rainforests. Despite this, less than 2% of them are meaningfully protected and warming water could wipe out up to 25 million hectares (almost 62 million acres) of kelp forests by 2050. Then, this August, the global ocean surface hit its highest temperature on record.

Kelp forests are biodiversity powerhouses that provide valuable ecosystem services. They provide food to millions of people living in coastal communities, help buffer coastlines during storms, and kelp also transfers marine nutrients to the land when it’s washed ashore. These ecosystems also help to reduce ocean acidification and are culturally important to many communities around the world.

Yet there are no global legal or policy instruments that focus explicitly on kelp.

Kelp forests are losing the policy battle not because science has failed them, but because language has. They don’t have an independent identity, but are rather clubbed in with red, brown and green algae as a ‘seaweed.’

Classifying these large brown algae under the seaweed…

Across…

T…

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