This is a fascinating account of the wonders of the Pacific kelp forests that run from Baja California to Alaska (and in the southern hemisphere off Chile). Like many of the world’s other great habitats, this one is under threat but we hear of a motley, diverse group of individuals who are doing their best to reverse and stem the losses.
I wish them well as I’ve driven a good stretch of the coastal highway from San Diego to the Columbia River and my gaze was more often turned to the Redwood Forests to the right than the kelp forests below the waves to the left. As I travelled, I saw Sea Otters eating juicy abalone, I had my own seafood meals and saw whales, sea lions and albatrosses to my left but if I’d read this book back then those sightings would have meant even more to me. I would have learned of the importance of the kelp to the functioning of the marine ecosystem and its value to human coastal communities for which the kelp can be a rich source of resources from the abalone to the young salmon that spend a year sheltering in its protection.
Kelp depends on cool, nutrient-rich, unpolluted waters and so is affected by many factors acting singly or together and one can imagine that they all come together in highly developed locations such as the coastal USA but the messages in the book apply more globally to the protection of coastal ecosystems across the world’s oceans.
The book contains many conversations with people whose livelihoods are affected by the health of the offshore kelp forests and the conservationists who are battling to save the kelp communities. It’s a well-written and fascinating book about an important ecosystem that will have escaped the attention of many of us.
The cover? It works well in that it looks like the title describes. I’d give it 8/10.
Forest of the Sea: the remarkable life and imperiled future of kelp by David Helvarg is published by Princeton University Press.
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