Video on Field Research - Kelp Forest Tipping Points

The summer of 2013 was busy with diving, fishing, and conducting research activities all linked to sea otters and kelp forests on B.C.’s central coast! These ecological field activities are part of the Salomon Lab’s larger project examining the cascading effects of predator recovery on coupled human-ocean ecosystems. Watch the short video below by Coastal Voices researcher Jenn Burt to see what we were up to!

This video describes kelp forest research taking place on the Central Coast of British Columbia at the Hakai Institute field station. The research is conducted by Dr. Anne Salomon and her students in the Coastal Marine Ecological and Conservation Lab at Simon Fraser University, and is supported by the Hakai Institute, NSERC, and the Heiltsuk and Wuikinuxv First Nations. I'm a researcher in the lab interested in "tipping points" in rocky reef ecosystems and I made this video in the first year of our work on the Central Coast to share the beauty of this area and the cool science that is striving to answer important ecological questions.

Anne’s students are working understand how ecosystems change when sea otters return to them. Here’s a list of research activities from summer 2013:

1)    Research divers Jenn Burt, Stu Humchitt, Kyle Demes and Britt Keeling did scuba surveys at 20 rocky reef sites falling along a gradient of sea otter occupation to monitor fish, invertebrates, and kelp to find out how sea otters are influencing these different communities.

2)    Leah Honka, Angeleen Olson, Erin Rechstiener and many others spent hours and hours watching sea otters through powerful telescopes to carefully observe and document what the otters are feeding on.

3)    Josh Silberg worked with Guardian Watchman Patrick Johnson to catch fish at the 20 rocky reef sites to see if rocky reefs occupied by sea otters have more kelp habitat and possibly more fish.