> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.mendolocal.news/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Kelp restoration is gaining ground on the North Coast. A super El Niño could test it. - URL: https://www.mendolocal.news/kelp-restoration-is-gaining-ground-on-the-north-coast-a-super-el-nino-could-test-it/ - Published: 2026-10-12T04:26:49.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-12T04:39:59.000Z - Description: Kelp restoration research efforts are showing success. But a strong El Nino year could set them back. - Author: Elise Cox - Tags: Mendocino, Fort Bragg, News, Mendo Local enterprise # Off the Mendocino Coast where crews are actively restoring bull kelp, reefs are recovering faster than nearby reefs left alone. Researchers told a KelpFest! audience Saturday that kelp canopy at Big River, kelp canopy jumped more than 900% between its 2023 low and fall 2025, bringing it back near 2022 levels. Noyo Harbor reached its historical kelp levels a full year before its control site. And despite warming waters this past summer, researchers said they were glad the restored kelp did not lose ground. The question hanging over the festival, which runs through Monday in Mendocino and Fort Bragg, is whether those gains can last. The super El Niño predicted by some forecasts could bring even warmer water. In August, state scientists warned lawmakers that warming could stall kelp recovery for years and cost the region its Dungeness crab season this winter. The North Coast KelpFest!, four days of art, science, food, music and film, is built around the possibility that bull kelp forests can recover. Organizers say the forests have declined by more than 96% along the North Coast. Saturday's briefing outlined how restoration crews are trying to bring them back: removing urchins, planting kelp, feeding the grazers and restoring a lost predator. 0:00 /0:23 1× ## **Thinning the urchins** Purple sea urchins have overrun reefs, grazing down returning kelp and creating underwater barrens. A fleet of 17 local commercial divers has spent 399 days at sea removing an estimated 11.16 million urchins, weighing about 223,195 pounds. The work has also helped keep divers employed locally after the red urchin fishery collapsed. The daily haul is shrinking, which presenters described as a sign of success. At the project's start, boats averaged about 750 pounds of urchins a day. After repeated passes over the same reefs to find animals hiding in crevices and other overlooked spots, the daily average has fallen to about 300 pounds. Grant Downie, a second-generation urchin diver now working on the removal effort, said his favorite part is seeing the reef respond. "In as little as a month, I've seen an area go from a complete carpet of purple sea urchins to regrowth of understory algae where I actually thought I was lost and I was in the wrong area." The goal is to reduce urchin density to two per square meter. Above that threshold, presenters said, surviving urchins can form a feeding front that consumes new kelp as soon as it appears. Starved urchins from the barrens are little more than shells. As reefs are cleared, restoration partners are finding ways to keep the animals out of landfills. Wild Blue Abalone ranches urchins that reach 2 inches or more. A materials company turns others into 3D-printing filament, urchin-based leather, pigments and a stone called "urchinite," used for countertops, tiles and furniture. One slab, presenters said, represents the removal of enough urchins to clear a conservatively estimated 1,000 square feet of barren. Other urchins are composted or used to dye wool and beanies. ## **Planting kelp, feeding the grazers** With urchin numbers reduced, crews are replanting kelp. Moss Landing Marine Labs grows juvenile bull kelp from reproductive material collected at Big River and Noyo Harbor. The young plants are trucked up the coast and attached to square arrays that let them grow several feet above the ocean floor, beyond the reach of grazing urchins. Known as ARKEVs, or Arrays to Recover Kelp Ecosystem Vegetation, the structures can be deployed from a boat without divers and are designed to withstand heavy wind and swell. Each holds 10 plants. At Big River, crews deployed 60 arrays, carrying 600 juvenile kelp plants in all. The plot produced nearly 400 pounds of kelp this year. Speaking to a group gathered on the Mendocino Headlands on Saturday afternoon, Bennett Bugbee, a research technician at Moss Landing Marine Labs, held up a piece of lab-grown kelp measuring just 3 or 4 inches. "In as little as a month, it will go from that size all the way up to the surface and be reproductive," he said. "So they're really, really fast growing. One single ARKEV unit can produce 30 pounds of kelp." Once mature, the kelp releases spores that can reseed the surrounding reef. 0:00 /0:11 1× Not every design has worked. The standard array, built from PVC, aluminum strut and polypropylene rope, keeps 60% to 70% of its kelp alive. A prototype made from wood and manila rope to reduce plastic use cut survival rates in half. The manila rope slackened underwater, allowing some of the kelp's rootlike holdfasts to slip free. The wood also became waterlogged and sank. Meanwhile, the arrays that can withstand ocean conditions are attracting marine life. Barnacles, wild bull kelp and other algae have settled on them, suggesting that the surrounding reef is not entirely barren. Crews are also experimenting with feeding the urchins. They harvest kelp grown on some arrays, chop it up and return it to the reef to mimic drift kelp — detached blades that urchins normally eat. Without that food source, starving urchins turn to live kelp. In experiments, urchins given drift kelp left living plants alone, while repeated feedings kept more urchins hidden and inactive. ## **Bringing back a predator** The longer-term hope is to restore the sunflower sea star, once a major predator of purple urchins. A single star can eat four urchins a day and drive hundreds more into hiding within a 5-meter radius. But sea star wasting disease, which began spreading in 2013, reduced the species by 94% across its range. The sunflower sea star is now functionally extinct in California. The Sunflower Star Laboratory raises the animals at an aquaculture facility in Moss Landing and has conducted California's first trials of releasing them both inside and outside protective cages. Stars fed starved urchins from barrens ate more than those fed healthy urchins and grew 50% in a month, making them promising candidates for clearing barrens. To guard against another disease outbreak, The Nature Conservancy is coordinating research into selective breeding, genetic resistance and bacteriophages — viruses that attack the *Vibrio* bacteria associated with the die-offs. Researchers are investigating the viruses as a possible stand-in for a vaccine. Signs of a recovering ecosystem are appearing at restoration sites. Baby rockfish are settling on the arrays, abalone are gathering near the new kelp, and a small number of wild sunflower stars have been spotted: six in 2025 and one juvenile this year. Rachel Karm, with The Nature Conservancy, said the juvenile was spotted at Big River and two other baby sunflower stars were seen elsewhere along the Mendocino Coast. She hopes adult stars are also present but remain hidden from view. The work is coordinated by the Pacific Coast Ocean Restoration Initiative, which sponsors the festival. Led by The Nature Conservancy and launched with an $18 million NOAA grant, the initiative links more than 20 partners working on kelp, white abalone and sunflower stars. The festival's producing coalition includes the Noyo Center for Marine Science, and local efforts such as the Big River Kelp Recovery Team are featured. ![Sea urchin shells in a jar. ](https://storage.ghost.io/c/65/2b/652bc5ac-05cb-46a1-8194-e7dee6ac7adf/content/images/2026/10/IMG_9077.jpg) Sea urchin shells in a jar. (MendoLocal.News CC BY 4.0) ## **The warm water ahead** The restoration effort faces a growing challenge from ocean warming. The warnings came in early August at the 51st annual Zeke Grader Fisheries Forum, a joint legislative fisheries committee hearing chaired by Sen. Mike McGuire, whose district spans the North Coast. Julia Coates, a quantitative fishery scientist with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, said current conditions resemble those of 2014 through 2016\. A marine heat wave nicknamed "the blob" was followed by one of the strongest El Niños on record. Bull kelp coverage on Northern California's nearshore reefs fell by more than 90%, the recreational red abalone fishery closed, and the red urchin fishery, already battered by the 1997-98 El Niño, "never returned to its former levels," Coates said. Asked by Assemblymember Chris Rogers, who represents Mendocino and other North Coast counties in the 2nd District, what to expect for kelp, Coates was blunt. "I would not expect to see much recovery of North Coast kelp during the next couple of years," she said. Unlike Southern California's giant kelp, a perennial that regrows more readily, North Coast bull kelp "may not see much recovery for some time," Coates said. Managers can still ease other pressures on the habitat, she added, including by removing purple urchins. That is the work presented Saturday, and the restoration sites' head start over their control sites suggests those efforts can help even as regional conditions turn against the kelp. Clarissa Anderson, who directs the Southern California Coastal Ocean Observing System at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, said this year's warning signs appeared earlier than usual. Coastal temperatures spiked "well before anything changed at the equator," as they did in 2014 and 2015\. Since 2015, she said, the Pacific appears to have "crossed some sort of tipping point" into a hotter baseline, with marine heat waves now arriving every one to three years. Anderson said the temperature anomaly at the equator may be approaching 2 degrees Celsius, a level associated with a super El Niño. But she cautioned that the 2016 "Godzilla" El Niño never delivered the promised wet winter. ## **Blind spots and the crab season** Anderson also pointed to gaps in the state's ability to monitor coastal conditions. Buoys, laser surveys and wave sensors used to track coastal flooding and erosion have lost "that big chunk of federal money" from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers over the past two years, she said, leaving State Parks to fill the gap. Monitoring equipment is especially sparse along the North Coast, where instruments can be difficult to deploy and maintain. When Rogers asked where state funding could make a difference, Anderson called monitoring "the critical statewide program that needs to be invested in." The same warm water threatens Dungeness crab. "This one's going to be a biggie this year," said Joanna Grable, who manages invertebrate fisheries for Fish and Wildlife's Marine Region, referring to domoic acid, a neurotoxin that can make crab unsafe to eat. The department has moved up its testing schedule in hopes of getting an early warning if levels approach those seen during the 2015-16 season, when readings reached 300 parts per million — 10 times the safety limit of 30\. That season, the fishery remained closed into late March in some areas and mid-to-late May in others, and the federal government declared a disaster. The crab fleet's next major decision point is Oct. 22-23, when the Dungeness Crab Task Force meets in Ukiah to weigh the timing of the season's opening against the risks of whale entanglement and the outlook for domoic acid. "It's going to be what it's going to be," Grable said. Restoration backers are planning for the longer term, too. Mendocino College will launch a marine science certificate program in fall 2027, and the California Conservation Corps is piloting a marine restoration corps starting in spring 2027. Organizers hope that community awareness, research and recovery efforts will eventually allow kelp forests to thrive again along the North Coast. Whether the current restoration gains can withstand another prolonged period of warming remains an open question.