Giant Kelp Forests, Santa Barbara, CA - Flora and Fauna Information Signs on Waymarking.com

The text on the sign reads:

"Giant Kelp Forests

Some of the most extensive submarine forest in the world lie off the Santa Barbara coast in 30 to 60 feet of water. One forest lies just beyond the Santa Barbara breakwater, others can be found around the northern Channel Islands.

Giant Kelp, a species of brown algae, is the dominant plant in these submarine forests. One of the fastest growing plants in the world, Giant Kelp can grow up to two feet a day and reach 200 feet in length. Kelp plants have no true roots, stems, leaves, or flowers. Each plant is anchored to rocks or debris on the ocean floor by a matt-like network of stands called holdfast. Growing upward from the holdfast are slender stalks, or stpes, that sprout leafy blades at regular intervals. Small gas-filled bladders are located at the base of each blade to buoy up the long kelp fronds. At the ocean surfact, the fronds of several plants may intertwine to form a dense kelp canopy. Kelp forest provide habitats for a variety of plant and animal life. Marine invertebrates such as spongs, bydroids and bryozoans attach themselves to holdfasts and rocky outcroppings on the sandy floor. Worms, seastars, crabs, lobsters, shrimp, sea urchins, snails, and abalone carawl in and around the holdfasts, and octopuses and bottom-dwelling fish glide along the ocean floor. Farther up the kelp plant, the kelp blades are covered with a myriad of encrusting plants and animals. Small fish graze on these organisms and hid in the blades to escape from bigger fish, sea lions, and sharks. Compared with forests on land, kelp forest have a short lifespan, sometimes lasting only a few years. Storms and grazing marine animals eventually weaken holdfasts, and ocean waves wash the plants ashore. During severe storms, older kelp forests may be almost destroyed. Dozens of younger plants, their fronds entangled in the kelp canopy, are also swept away. But as the sunlight reaches the ocean floor again, new plants sprout from kelp spores that have drifted to the bottom.

Kelp is a rich source of vitamins, minerals, and nutrients and has long been used by humans as a food supplement and for fertilizer. Kelp was first commercial harvested in Santa Barbara during World War I, when German potash fertilizer was unobtainable. During the later 1920s, scientists discovered that algin, as emulsifying and stabilizing agent, could be commercially manufactured from kelp, and a kelp-harvesting industry rapidaly developed. Today, algin is used in many familiar products such as ice cream, cosmetics, medicine, paint, plaster and paper. In the future, kelp may provide a new source of fuel; decomposition of kelp produces methane, a useful and renewable substitute for natural petroleum gas."

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