water, and at Palos Verdes, it began 

 coincident with a general improvement in 

 discharged water quality and a large 

 increase in sea urchin fishing (see Sewer 

 Discharge above, and Wilson 1982). In 

 this case, the significance of restoration 

 efforts relative to the other 

 environmental changes that may have 

 contributed to community recovery will 

 probably never be known. 



Macrocystis can now be easily grown 

 from spore to small juvenile sporophyte 

 (Figure 1) in the laboratory, so it is 

 feasible to use these stages in restora- 

 tion as North (1976b) has done with 

 microscopic sporophytes. Dean et al . 

 (1983) and Dean and Deysher (1983) have 

 also used gametophytes and microscopic 

 sporophytes for large-scale field experi- 

 ments. In theory, the easiest method of 

 introducing kelp is to release spores into 

 the area by attaching mesh bags with fer- 

 tile sporophylls to the bottom. Whether 

 plants eventually result from this pro- 

 cedure will depend on a variety of factors 

 that can affect the small stages of 

 Macrocystis (Figure 25 and see Chapter 5). 



6.6.2 Creating New Kelp Forests 



The potential for producing large 

 amounts of fuel such as methane from giant 

 kelp (North 1977, Wise et al. 1977), and 

 the real or potential loss of kelp forests 

 as a result of man's activities (such as 

 at SONGS; see Section 6.5.4) has stimu- 

 lated recent attempts to establish giant 

 kelp monocultures or communities. An 

 initial effort to produce the former was 

 tried offshore from southern California. 

 A structure with an area of 0.25 acres 

 (referred to as the quarter-acre module) 

 was moored in deep water, and planted with 

 adult Macrocystis . Nutrients were in- 

 creased by pumping up deep water (Gerard 

 pers. comm.). Design problems, currents, 

 and even a large sea urchin recruitment 

 contributed to the failure of the project, 

 and the structure was eventually lost. 

 Neushul and Harger (in press) have 

 established a forest of 700 adult plants 

 on a nearshore sand bottom near Santa 

 Barbara. Plants are anchored by putting 

 the holdfasts in mesh bags filled with 

 gravel , and the effects of density and 

 fertilization on productivity are being 

 evaluated (see Section 4.3.2.1). 



For fuel production to be cost 

 effective, Macrocystis would have to be 

 grown on a very large scale. Assuming 

 engineering and biological problems could 

 be solved, monocultures of Macrocystis or 

 other kelps covering many square kilo- 

 meters of the ocean may have significant 

 impacts on water quality and perhaps even 

 climate, as well as on other uses of the 

 ocean such as shipping (Hruby 1978). 

 These issues remain to be resolved. 



Natural stand size could be increased 

 in nearshore areas where present communi- 

 ties are limited in size only by lack of 

 hard substrata. This could be done by 

 simply providing solid substrata such as 

 rock. This has already been done inadver- 

 tently in some areas such as Goleta Bay 

 near Santa Barbara, where the kelp forest 

 has extended into a shallow sandy area. 

 In this instance, rock covering a sewage 

 discharge pipeline that goes from the 

 beach through the sand provided the 

 suitable substrata (Foster pers. obs.). 

 Giant kelp forests have also been created 

 in the middle of large sandy areas by 

 placing rocks to form large artificial 

 reefs (Davis et al. 1982). In cases where 

 man's activities threaten or have caused 

 the destruction of local kelp communities, 

 such reefs are a possible means of 

 compensation (Grove 1982). Southern 

 California Edison Company, in conjunction 

 with the California Department of Fish and 

 Game, recently placed a reef (Pendleton 

 artificial reef) for this purpose near 

 Oceanside, north of San Diego (Grove 1982, 

 Grant et al. 1982). To date, over 3 years 

 after construction, giant kelp has not 

 become established on the reef, and adult 

 Macrocystis and Pterygophora cal ifornica 

 transplanted to the reef have been severe- 

 ly damaged by fish grazing and storms 

 (LOSL 1983). The slow development has 

 probably also resulted from the early 

 dominance of the substrata by particular 

 invertebrates (see Section 4.4.2.3), 

 precipitous relief of the reef, and the 

 relatively long distance from a source of 

 spores and larvae (LOSL 1983). 



The objectives of most prior artifi- 

 cial reefs and reef research have been 

 fish attraction and fisheries enhancement, 

 and it appears that the design and place- 

 ment of reefs for creating entire kelp 

 forests is a more complex problem. Based 



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