Where did the LJ kelp bed go?
 

I was fishing last saturday and was disappointed when I realized the kelp bed disappeared. I've fished LJ kelp year round for the past 10ish years and have never seen no kelp bed so far north next to the point. There were a few isolated kelp's scattered about but didn't extend out as far as the normal kelp bed would. What's going on?

High Tide

A lot of times the wind and current pushes it diagonal with the surface so you can't see it. You will see it however if you have a fish finder or drop your sabiki down deep and get snagged whenever you drift 5 feet.

Kelp grows fast, so it breaks off fast too. Maybe a lot of it broke off and drifted away, and the wind pushed it down.

The only other thing I could think of it the kelp harvester boats just cleaned the area out.

We no longer have the kelp harvest boats here, Kelpco left many years ago. Current pushes the kelp down and we do in fact have much less kelp right now than normal because of the warm water. Kelp does best in cold water and warm water weakens it so it breaks off much easier. Also grows slower in the warm water.

I asked the same thing about my fave 'Bu kelp bed, I was told the kelps don't like the warmer water of the el Nino.

Andy

Most beds are at 33% or less compared to boom seasons. Dana and SanO can be fished as you want w flyline now. It comes and goes. Its not the end of the world. A lot of my marks were made in past warmwater years and can only be fished in those years. I like it better. The pothole posse has no skill.

On KelCo. If you newbies think the lobster season adds too much kelp debris to the water, fishing on a kelp harvest days made trolling unmanageable. Fishing Blacks or Tourmaline was a good option on those days. KelCo is gone but so is Blacks and Tourmaline.

Lobster boats cutting and breaking tops of kelp. But that makes for lots of those offshore paddies 😁

Thanks for all the replies and filling me in! I'm guessing it is mainly because of the trappers and warm water then cause my FF wasn't showing anything nor could I see any submerged kelp with 10-15' vis.

Jim's right, we lost them in 2005 when they moved their entire San Diego operation to the exisiting faccility they have in Scotland. In 2005 they said it cost them 1/20th the cost to harvest and process in Scotland vs. San Diego.

The reason the kelp does not fare well in the warm water is that the animals and other plants that eat it thrive in the warm water.

There is no kelp left at the Cabrillo Mole in Catalina either.

It has to do with the current higher temperature of the water.

Kelp grows very fast, so even if the tops were gone, it could grow back.

The warmer temp must weaken the hold fast that kelp uses to stick itself to the rocks.

Also the sea urchins can devastate a kelp forest. Lobsters keep them in check.

Sheephead keep them in check. A lobster can do nothing to an urchin.

Above 75 deg and it starts to die off. We lost more than half of our kelps in Carlsbad. Too bad because it took over 10 years to get some of it back.

50% of la jolla kelp bed is currently floating on the north 9 mile bank...

Nobody mentioned pollution. There once were massive kelp beds off Palos Verdes and the HorseShoe Kelp off San Pedro. It was discovered that the only organism that could thrive off the pollution created by the Whites Point sewage out let were sea urchins...which also eat the kelp. Russ Izor had tried transplanting kelp from Catalina Island back to the mainland without any significant success. I would assume that as San Diego and nearby Tijuana continue to grow, similar adverse effects are occuring.

Giant Kelp Canopy Cover and Biomass Estimates from High Resolution SPOT Imagery off Santa Barbara, California ffice:office" /><O:p></O:p>

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Kyle C Cavanaugh<SUP>1</SUP>, David A Siegel<SUP>1</SUP>, Brian P Kinlan<SUP>2</SUP>, Dan C Reed<SUP>3</SUP> <O:p></O:p>

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<SUP>1</SUP> Institute for Computational Earth System Science,<O:p></O:p>

University of California, Santa Barbara,<O:p></O:p>

Santa Barbara, CA 93106-3060, USA<O:p></O:p>

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<SUP>2</SUP> Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology<O:p></O:p>

University of California, Santa Barbara <O:p></O:p>

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<SUP>3</SUP> Marine Science Institute<O:p></O:p>

University of California, Santa Barbara<O:p></O:p>

Giant kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) is important both as a valuable renewable natural resource and as the basis for one of the most productive ecosystems in the world. The plant itself has great economic value and is harvested for use in a wide variety of products ranging from pharmaceuticals to cosmetics to food products. Perhaps more importantly, giant kelp is an “ecosystem engineer” that provides both food and three-dimensional habitat structure to a diverse array of biologically and commercially important species of algae, invertebrates, fish, and marine mammals (ffice:smarttags" /><?xml:namespace prefix = "st1" ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-comhttp://www.bigwatersedge.com/bwevb/ /><st1:City w:st=<ST1:place w:st="on">Dayton</ST1:place></st1:City> 1985). Macrocystis also plays a major role in the marine carbon cycle as kelp forests are extremely fast growing and have productivity levels comparable to tropical rainforests (Mann 1973). Because of this high productivity, kelp forests export large quantities of organic matter to adjacent littoral (Polis & Hurd 1996) and continental shelf (Vetter & Dayton 1999) systems. <O:p></O:p>
Kelp growth and mortality is regulated by a number of factors including water temperature, depth, bottom type, wave action, competition with other species, and anthropogenic impact (<st1:City w:st="on"><ST1:place w:st="on">Dayton</ST1:place></st1:City>, 1985). Increased wave action from winter storms is one of the most common sources of plant mortality (Dayton, 1985; Ebeling et al. 1985). This typically gives giant kelp populations in southern <st1:State w:st="on"><ST1:place w:st="on">California</ST1:place></st1:State> a seasonal cycle of late fall highs and early spring lows. In addition, the frequency and intensity of the winter storm season varies annually, leading to large fluctuations in population size from year to year (Dayton et al, 1992). The effects of storm mortality vary spatially as well as temporally and are controlled by gradients in bottom type and wave exposure (Graham et al, 1997). On larger time and spatial scales El Nino/Southern Osciallation (ENSO) cycles bring warmer waters and decreased nutrient levels which can cause mortality and prevent recovery of populations (Dayton and Tegner 1989). Because many of the controls on kelp populations are variable on a number of different temporal and spatial scales, the abundance, extent, and condition of giant kelp forests vary dramatically over space and time.<O:p></O:p>
While the morphologies and growth habits of kelps are vast, this study is only concerned with the giant kelp Macrocystis pyrifera, by far the most common canopy forming kelp in <ST1:place w:st="on">Southern California</ST1:place>. An adult Macrocystis plant consists of a bundle of vine-like fronds buoyed by small gas bladders and anchored to hard substrate by a common holdfast. Hard substrate is a requisite for giant kelp survival and acts as one of the major determinants of suitable kelp habitat in <ST1:place w:st="on">Southern California</ST1:place>. Individual kelp fronds grow rapidly (up to 0.5 m/day), and shed large quantities of macroscopic, particulate, and dissolved organic matter into the surrounding ecosystem.Once they reach the surface fronds grow horizontally up to sixty feet and create an extremely dense surface canopy. Large beds of kelp can form a collective canopy of over 160 hectares in area. This surface canopy makes kelp forests distinctive when viewed from above and therefore suitable for aerial and satellite mapping. <O:p></O:p>
Previous studies (Jensen et al, 1980; Augenstein et al, 1991; Deysher 1993) have successfully mapped kelp canopy using various types of aerial and satellite imagery. Jensen (1980), Augenstein (1991), and Deysher (1993) found that multispectral satellite data with 20 and 30 meter resolution was sufficient for mapping the distribution of large (>10 ha) kelp beds in Southern California and quantifying their areal extent. However, these earlier studies have been both spatially and temporally limited; in all cases less than 4 different dates were analyzed for less than 20 km of coastline. The California Department of Fish and Game has conducted higher resolution (2 m) aerial surveys of giant kelp canopy for the entire <st1:State w:st="on"><ST1:place w:st="on">California</ST1:place></st1:State> coastline in 1989, 1999, and annually from 2002 to 2006. These surveys are performed in the fall when kelp beds are at or near their maximum size. However, this annual coverage is not sufficient to resolve the seasonal variations in kelp populations and to identify the mechanisms of these variations. By increasing the frequency and area of satellite image acquisitions, we hope to better understand kelp population dynamics in relation to biophysical forcings on monthly to annual timescales.<O:p></O:p>