Taking hold

  

Juvenile Sea Palm (Postelsia palmaeformis) in the rocky intertidal zone on 18 April 2022.

Just getting started

  

 Juvenile Winged Kelp (Alaria marginata), photographed on 2 Jannuary 2022.

A forest of palms

Wow, the Sea Palm (Postelsia palmaeformis) was really tall in Mendocino County this year!  Here's a photo of Eric making his way through a Sea Palm forest on the way to our study site:

 

 

 

Okay, perhaps you guessed that the Sea Palm isn't really over four feet tall, but it was luxurious up there.  There were lots of nice, extensive patches of this charismatic kelp!

 

True or false?

Last night (9 March 2020), while I was doing a survey in the rocky intertidal zone, an interesting little brown seaweed caught my eye.  I had to get some other things done, but I took a few photos to review later (see below).  The thin and slender brown blades were ~8-10 cm (3-4 inches) long:

 

 

 

Right now I'm guessing that this is Petalonia fascia (sometimes called False Kelp, because it looks like a small kelp at first, but it's not a true kelp).  I'll try to check in with a few seaweed folks to see if that's correct.

Float sequence

 

A small section of Feather Boa Kelp (Egregia menziesii) showing the floats (pneumatocysts) and lateral blades.  When I picked up this piece of kelp today, I realized I hadn't thought about the growth and development of Feather Boa Kelp floats.  

At first I thought the size of the floats might be sequential on a young plant, i.e., largest near the base of the plant and smallest towards the outer tip.  But seeing these floats today made me re-think the development of the floats.  I haven't had a chance to research whether someone has tracked this in maturing plants over time, but now I'm curious.  I might have to follow a few individuals to see how they progress!

P.S.  For more pictures and information about Feather Boa Kelp, you can review the post called "Happy Birthday, Archibald!" from 14 March 2012.

Winging it

 

Another beautiful view of dense kelp in the low intertidal zone on the Mendocino coast — this one is Winged Kelp (Alaria marginata).

Fantastic Five

 

While working in Mendocino County this weekend we noticed many of the low intertidal kelps looked very healthy.  This is a beautiful patch of Five-ribbed Kelp (Costaria costata).  Many of the blades were nearly 6 feet tall.

P.S.  For a little more information about this species, see the previous post called "Puckered up" from 22 August 2012.

Is it a record?

Several days ago, I came across an interesting Bull Kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana) specimen washed up on the beach.  Instead of being narrow and ribbon-like, the blades were broad, even approaching oval:

 

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you might recall that I showed a very broad-bladed Bull Kelp a couple of years ago — see "Seaweed puzzler" from 12 April 2015.  That blade was ~16 cm across.  I compared that to the description in the Marine Algae of California, which stated that the blades could reach up to 15 cm across.

Well, when I saw this specimen, I wondered if it was even broader.  Sure enough, I measured it with the ruler along the edge of my notebook and estimated it was ~22 cm wide.  

At the time I couldn't remember how wide the 2015 specimen had been.  When I reviewed it, I started to wonder if I had measured incorrectly in the field.  Could this specimen really be 6 cm wider than the previous one?

I'm glad I took a picture with my notebook next to the blade.  To get a second opinion using the photo, I asked Eric to calculate the width of the blade based on the width of my notebook.  He came up with 22.65 cm! 

So is this a record-wide Bull Kelp blade?  Has anyone found a Bull Kelp specimen with blades wider than 22 cm?

Keep your eyes open!

Three golds

Old gold:

 

Five-ribbed Kelp (Costaria costata), Mendocino coast, 2 May 2017

Green gold:

 

 

Fish embryos, Sonoma coast, 30 April 2017  (They were in single layer on the underside of a small boulder.  Let me know if you can identify the species!) 

Rose gold:

 

Johnny-tuck (Triphysaria eriantha ssp. rosea) and Coastal Goldfields (Lasthenia minor), Mendocino coast, 2 May 2017

 

Great lengths

It's so nice to see more kelp around this year.

 

This seemed like a pretty large specimen of Bull Kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana).  But it turns out that Bull Kelp can get much larger.  

For example, the longest blades hanging down in the photo above are probably ~2 meters (~75 inches) long...but they are known to reach lengths of up to twice that length (~4 meters or 157 inches)!

The large float (pneumatocyst) at the top of the stipe/base of the blades also seemed pretty big:

 

This pneumatocyst was ~11.5 cm (~4.5") inches in diameter...but they can reach diameters of ~15 cm (~6") across. 

In case there's any confusion, in the photo above the pneumatocyst is on the right.    ;)

We'll have to keep searching for an even larger Bull Kelp specimen!

Photographed on 29 September 2016.

Young bull

 

Bull Kelp is a very large alga when full grown — the stipe (stem) alone can reach a length of ~36 meters (~118 feet!), and the pneumatocyst (float) can be as large as 15 cm (0.5 feet) across. 

These two juveniles pictured above are quite small — the larger individual's stipe measured ~4.5 cm (~1.7 inches) and its pneumatocyst was only 1 cm (0.4 inches) across.  (The smaller individual doesn't have a pneumatocyst yet; and its first broad blade hasn't yet split into Bull Kelp's distinctive ribbon-like blades.)

With the end of El Niño and water temperatures cooling down, I hope this year will be a better year for kelps in our region.

Photograph from Salmon Creek Beach on 6 August 2016.

Downcoast?

It's been a rough couple of years for some of the local kelps.  They've struggled with the warmer ocean temperatures of 2014 and 2015.  

But recently we noticed several specimens of Bull Kelp (Nereocystis luetkeana) and Sea Palm (Postelsia palmaeformis) on the beach.  Perhaps they washed downcoast from more northern sites?  

Let's hope that this is a good sign, and that water temperatures cool down this summer giving them a better chance at successful growth and reproduction.