Featured image: Salome (left) with Dr. Sylvia Earle inspecting kelp samples © Taylor Griffith
By Salome Buglass
To follow her research on the Galápagos kelp forests, follow Salome on Twitter @bugsalome and her research update on Experiment.
Kelps are giant, brown algae that look a lot like plants, but actually belong to the Protist Kingdom, so they are not even closely related. However, much like trees, kelp can form vast undersea canopies, called kelp forests, teeming with marine file, feeding, breeding and finding refuge there. Kelps are cold water species that need nutrients, light and a hard seafloor to latch on to with their holdfasts (a rootlike system). This is why kelp forests are almost exclusively found in higher, colder latitudes.…