September 17, 2024 — Kelp forests are a foundational feature along Maine’s coastline, providing the food, habitat, and clean water needed for a rich marine ecosystem. But these forests are in flux due to changes in modern fisheries and, more recently, due to rapid warming.
A team of scientists led by Douglas Rasher, a senior research scientist at Bigelow Laboratory, are illuminating those changes with the first in-depth census of Maine’s kelp forests in almost 20 years. Their findings show the widespread collapse of forests along the southern coast but provide new evidence for the surprising resilience of kelp forests in northern Maine, even as warming drives slow but significant declines there.
This research, made possible by funding from Maine Sea Grant and recently published in the journal Ecology, highlights just how much climate change is altering long-standing ecological relationships, as well as the importance of regional differences in how ecosystems may respond to ocean warming.
“I was floored by how dramatically the seaweed communities had changed and how much warmer coastal waters had become,” said Thew Suskiewicz, a former postdoctoral researcher at Bigelow Laboratory and the study’s first author. “The more we sampled for this project, the more apparent those changes were and, sadly, I anticipate this is only the beginning.”