Climate change has intensified the East Australian Current, sending warmer waters (and their critters) more south than ever before. This has almost wiped out all the Giant kelp in Tassie. But is AI the one to help reverse that? We sent Jack, our Head of Social Media and Community, to the Apple Isle to find out.

We Are Explorers acknowledges that this adventure is located on the traditional Country of the Palawa People who have occupied and cared for the lands, waters, and their inhabitants for thousands of years. We pay our respects to them as the Traditional Custodians and recognise that sovereignty was never ceded.

 

Over the last few years, I’ve been tangled in kelp.

Last year I learnt about the missing crayweed forest off the coast of Sydney after being introduced to Operation Crayweed. I helped rally the We Are Explorers community to fund the restoration of a crayweed site through the Underwater Forest Project.

The process, which included helping replant the site and learning about the restoration of this beautiful habitat, helped me understand the importance of kelp to underwater ecosystems.

With crayweed maxing out at 2.5m tall, you could imagine my excitement when Google called and invited me to lutruwita/Tasmania to dive in a Giant kelp forest.

At least that’s what the Explorer in me fixated on.

It was more along the lines of:

Google: Only 5% of Tassie’s Giant kelp remains and our AI technology is aiding the restoration efforts.

Me: ‘Let’s go diving!’

What’s happening to Giant kelp forests?

Have you heard of the Great Southern Reef? Despite 70% of Australians living within 50km of it, most have never heard of it. The Great Barrier Reef steals the show, despite the Great Southern Reef stretching across the coastline of five Australian states and being a vital habitat for thousands of marine species.

As part of this reef, dense forests of Giant kelp once lined Tasmania’s East Coast, but rising sea temperatures have caused this to decline by 95%.

WATCH: Only 5% of Tasmania’s Giant Kelp Remains!

A Giant kelp forest in Port Davey off the lutruwita/Tasmania’s west coast.
Photo supplied by Great Southern Reef Foundation

What’s it like to dive in a Giant Kelp Forest?

As we kitted up at Eaglehawk Neck Dive Centre on the Tasman Peninsula, I noticed a quote stuck to the wall above the rental dive suits, attributed to Charles Darwin’s voyage of the Beagle in 1839:

‘The numbers of living creatures of all orders whose existence intimately depends on kelp is wonderful… I can only compare these great aquatic forests with the terrestrial ones in the intertropical regions, yet if in any country a forest was destroyed, I do not believe as many species of animals would perish as would here from the destruction of kelp.’

Now, 189 years later we’re seeing the destruction of kelp that the naturalist and father of evolution theory described, and I was about to check it out myself.

We travelled by boat along the Tasman Peninsula at the foot of Tassie’s gigantic cliff-faced coastline with Paul Tompkins, The Nature Conservancy’s Kelp Restoration Coordinator and marine frothlord.

With shakkas at the ready and a thick Californian accent, Paul described the joys of diving within Giant kelp forest.

‘Imagine yourself flying through the canopy of a forest, birds around you, butterflies flying around. It’s a similar experience.’

My excitement grew. What better way to prove to people something needs protection than by showing them epic footage of its natural beauty and possibly nabbing a rad underwater forest selfie?

As we bounced towards Cape Hauy, the boat captain explained that the Eaglehawk Dive Centre used to run Giant kelp tours where divers would travel to the Tasman Peninsula to experience first-hand what it’s like being immersed in a Giant kelp forest. They stopped this in 2015 – which should have been a red flag to my selfie intentions.

As we pulled into Fortescue Bay at the foot of Cape Hauy, it was mentioned that they never used to be able to pull the boat this far into the bay, as the Giant kelp grew up from the seabed and formed a thick canopy on the surface that would tangle around the boat’s propeller.

Like Port Davey (pictured), Fortescue Bay’s Giant kelp forest once looked like this. Photo supplied by Great Southern Reef Foundation

Diving in the Giant Kelp

At this point, I was thinking, ‘Wow, so it used to fill this entire large bay but now it’s retreated and there’s just a small, but incredible, forest’.

Wrong!

With my snorkel suctioned on and buoyant dry suit keeping me toasty, I dropped into the 16℃ water to get my first look at… blue, stark, empty, and… blue water.

‘Where’s the kelp?’ I thought. We followed Paul. ‘Here’s one!’, he gurgled through his snorkel with excitement, his finger pointing to a lonely strand of kelp swaying in the swell resembling a lone tree in the middle of a paddock.

Although a beautiful plant, I was starting to realise how dire this Giant kelp situation was. We followed Paul as he found a couple more.

‘This has all been planted as part of the restoration project’, he explained between dives. Again, even more dire.

As I treaded water in the bay, looking up at the towering cliffs covered in trees, the only human-made object I could see was the boat we’d travelled in on, yet human impact had completely devastated this once flourishing reef

While we saw golden kelp and crayweed plants, which provided habitat for some sea life, it lacked the physical structure that a canopy of Giant kelp forest provides for sea creatures, as it grows up to 35m tall and up to half a metre each day in the right conditions.

After 90 minutes of diving to only see a handful of Giant kelp plants, I certainly didn’t have the magical selfie I’d envisioned to accompany my, ‘We need to protect this’ message.

But in a way, it left a much stronger impact.

After spending a long day prior in laboratories and chatting with kelp experts about the immense efforts that are being undertaken to restore these Giant kelp forests, I still hadn’t grasped how grim this situation was.

5% of Tassie’s Giant kelp forests remaining sure reads small, but until I dove among the lone, planted kelp that was clinging to life in a bay once a giant forest teeming with sea life, I realised why these efforts to save our reefs are so important.

How is Google and its AI involved?

Now it made sense why Google has jumped on board to support CSIRO, The Nature Conservancy, the Great Southern Reef Foundation, and the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) in their efforts to help the kelp.

Finding exactly where the remaining kelp canopies are located is a vital yet challenging first step. That’s where Google comes in.

Using a combo of AI and geospatial mapping through Google Earth Engine and Google Cloud’s AI, researchers are able to locate and analyse kelp forests using satellite imagery providing a long-term monitoring strategy.

Knowing where the kelp is and being able to monitor it is one thing, the next step is working out how it can survive in the warming environment.

As we walked through their fancy laboratories, the CSIRO and IMAS talked us through how Google AI will be used to identify the generic patterns of the kelp that has survived increasing water temperatures. They can then grow more of these kelp varieties and plant them at the restoration sites, like the one I dived at.

How You Can Help the Kelp

As we peeled ourselves out of our dry suits back at the dive centre, we asked Paul what the average person could do to help the kelp.

Citizen science is one way people can share their recent and historical sightings of Giant kelp using the Kelp Tracker 2.0, which will help research and recovery efforts.

Out of the water, it’s a simple, yet mammoth task – reduce your carbon emissions.

These emissions lead to rising sea temperatures and a strengthening East Australian Current that drives warm, nutrient-poor water further south to Tassie, where the Giant kelp struggles to survive.

To learn more about the Great Southern Reef and Giant kelp the Google Arts & Culture collection has collated a stack of stories on reforesting the ocean, the sea creatures that live among kelp, and much more.

I recommend listening to artist Emma Robertson’s Tune Into Saltwater Country to learn more about Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples’ connections to kelp.

The author was a guest for this article so that they could try all of the experiences for themself. Check out our Editorial Standards for more info on how we approach these partnerships.

This article is part of Act Local, our project to champion grassroots conservationists who are getting their hands dirty and having a positive environmental impact in their local communities. Check it out!