The towering kelp forests off Canada’s West Coast grow anew each year. In the spring they start out as little, fresh sprouts, stretching their fronds to the surface to soak in the sunlight. As the year progresses, they grow and grow and grow, sometimes 25 cm a day, reaching up to 20m tall in the fall. The mature kelp creates important homes for marine life including sea stars, kelp-encrusting bryozoans, fish, kelp crabs, snails and many more species. Kelp-encrusting bryozoans are small invertebrates that live on the kelp and make incredibly beautiful lacy patterns by cloning themselves and building box-like, tiny homes made of calcium carbonate and chitin. These patterns remind me of my grandmother’s intricate Irish lace; bright-white concentric patterns, painstakingly formed, building on each other to create yards of beautiful patterns.
I snapped this shot of a blade of kelp where a tiny sea star, no bigger than a pencil eraser, was cruising along the kelp frond alongside a colony of lacy bryozoans. I love how in black and white the patterns stand out on the dark surface like stars in the night sky.
To me, the growth of kelp each year and the life it supports, from the very small, like this juvenile sea star, to the very large gives me a profound sense of hope, that maybe this generation will be the one to make meaningful change on our blue planet.
