S.Cloudy on Tuesday in July, Mitch Johnson and Shawn Taylor Yisimi divers in the back of R/V Xenarcha, a 28 -foot boat floating on the coast of Rancho Balos Verdes, south of Los Angeles. Behind them, the clear water in the Pacific Ocean is widespread with a forest of green army strands, waving like a mermaid underwater.
We are here to investigate the giant Pacific Herb, the species that have once flourished in this cold ice water. However, over the past two decades, a mixture of warm ocean temperatures, pollution, overfishing and the spread of hungry seafarers that devour the sea grass has a 80 % decrease in the forest along the coast of southern California.
In recent years, the scientists have organized a return – as they installed one of the largest and most projects to restore sea grass in the world. To do this, they recruited an army of divers with a hammer to destroy and clean fierce canals. Today’s trip is an opportunity to see this success closely.
Through the edge of the boat, cases of the sea herb are thick and very durable in places that make up a mat on the surface of the ocean, and are strong enough for charity and wirenat to wander during its restaurant on the fish. This water hosts many species, starting with bright orange garbaldi fish and white sharks that silently roam the coast to the blue whales that sail across the deep canal a few miles away from our east.
Divers like Johnson and Taylor have a variety of tools at their disposal. On some days, they pick up rock hammers – like an underwater version of the seven dwarves – and dive into the amazing purple kettle that destroys the sea herb. But today, they are only gunmen with a tape and camera to wipe the condition of this giant hidden forest.
Gear On, divers give Tom Ford’s thumb, CEO of Bay Foundation, a non -profit organization devoted to the restoration of the Gulf of Santa Monica and its coastal waters, which is experimenting with the boat. With small spots, it disappears in the water. Ford and I am waiting, with the calm waves on the side of Xenarcha, to see what they find.
Under the leadership of the Gulf Foundation, divers have spent 15575 hours underwater over the past 13 years. To repeat the herb, they focus on reducing the effect of one eating eaten: purple hedgehog. The effort has succeeded, as it destroyed 5.8 million purple hedgehogs and cleansed 80.7 acres (32.7 hectares, with a size of 61 football fields), and allowing to rub the sea herb to return.
But with the results received abroad and external, did anyone notice? Ford wonders the same. He says, “We call it the forgotten forest.”
Cathedrals in the sea
Rapid ecosystems are known as “Sequoias of the Sea” for a good reason: it stores large amounts of carbon, creates habitats for more than 800 sea species and opens the strong power of Storm waves. Technically, it is a micro, and it can grow up to 2 feet per day, as it reaches 100 feet from the coral reef bed to the surface.
For those lucky enough to see the sea grass from under the waves, it can feel like fictional stories – a forest, but instead of walking through it, you fly under the water.
Ford still remembers the first time that he died in the forest as a special. The sunlight looked like tongues of flame rippling across the blades from underwater, and looks at the light of light through small holes in the canopy. He says: “It seemed to be a cathedral, with light shooting across stained glass,” he says. “Sometimes they float across this, and there are thousands of fish of all kinds of colors that wander everywhere. It is like flying through a dense life forest that cannot be imagined.”
But for some time, these glorious environments were at risk of disappearance. When the Gulf Foundation started working in this water in 2012, the sea bed looked like a purple carpet-covered in golf balls the size of the settler golf ball.
One of the symptoms of an ecosystem had gone, with multiple intertwined injuries: the sea foxes, which eaten eating as a motive for their diet, were eliminated by fishermen in the nineteenth century. Then, from the 1940s to the seventies, a large amount of D. Chemical At the sea off the Balos Verdes. The sediments were also buried from the landslides of the coral reefs in silt, which prevents anything from growing. Recently, the local sea stars, who eat hedgehog, were wounded with a Wasting the diseaseAnd turned into Go. All that remains is the hedgehog, which eats sea herb at an incredible rate, and to scratch the coral reef bed to the extent that any sea herb bacterium is still circulating cannot get a foothold.
Ford and Bay Foundation conducted multiple tests to determine the optimum amount of hedgehog for each square meter: two. Meanwhile, some areas of Barnes had 70-80 hedgehog per meter. Since they did not have much to eat, they were mainly empty – hungry, empty of their meat, just hanging and preventing the sea grass from growing. There was a lot to do it.
Bay Foundation applied for scholarships from federal and state authorities and began to employ divers, collected 75 volunteers, and even working with commercial fishermen to help. Ford notes that the team was not destroying the healthy convoy that people depend on their livelihood. “We were pushing the fishermen to return the forest, and then they could return to the fish from there again,” he says.
This is the case with Terry Herzik, Fisher Red Sea, a long time ago, who started working with the Foundation in 2012, spending nine hours a day breaking the hedgehogs instead of collecting them for sale. “Nobody has more hours than the heat cage more than Terry,” says Ford, referring to the Herzik boat, the sun’s spot, which is based near. “We could not achieve this without it.”
Slowly, systematically, the divers ventured and destroyed the Qunaqafi week after week, which led to the purification of conspiracies. Johnson says that beating a hedgehog with a long -time rock hammer gives a “pathological crisis.” It is quick to point out that this manual action is underwater (and while wearing a stressful suit).
Divers talk about their work as if they were part of the construction crew – it’s a frequent work, but they meet, like filling in the ocean. “You can just click and click, sometimes you should access the cracks to take out the hedgehogs,” says Taylor. “Your hours are very tired.”
But the real benefit is to know the speed with which the herb returns when the hedgehog is under control – in some cases within months. This is because the germs of a mono microscopic sea herb are heading in the water column all the time-such as the seeds of the wind that the wind carries-pending the appropriate conditions on coral reefs and starting growth.
Johnson remembers one spot along the coast. “Within three months, the herb returned,” he says. “I never saw a dense sea forest – and it was crazy to see how quickly it returns.”
With a little sea herb from my friends
Taylor and Johnson, who work in the Gulf Foundation, return to the back of the boat. Sea water shakes their hair, describing what they saw in the wiping area: tons of fish, a small shark thickness and a green forest.
“There is still a lot of sea grass,” says Johnson Ford, but it’s not all. “There is still a pocket where the hedgehog expands.” It is still ambiguous why some areas remain regained with the sea grass, while others return to Barrens.
The boat moves to another point on the coast, where the divers descend again. Here, a thick sea forest is so thick it is a mat, which makes the boat in place.
“I don’t know if we need a marina,” says Ford. “I will leave the algae that holds me.”
Ford and I raised the sea herb from the edge of the boat. It is slightly slippery, rubber and back. At the top, I can see a colony of Bryozoans- small invertebrates that feed filters on the surface of the sea. The shrimp and snails are gathered on fronds: evidence of its importance as habitats for many creatures. I run my fingers along the blades that have just started to distinguish and develop the lamps that keep the structure standing on its feet. Even as a parent of children who grow quickly, it is difficult to imagine the speed with which these algae moves-always to the top, always. “Everything flows from the herb.” Ford says.
The project can be a model for other parts of the world where the herb is struggling. In Tasmania and South Korea, there are ongoing efforts to save the sea. The Santa Barbara channel in California is also a goal for future restoration work.
With points from the warmer oceans in the future climatic variable, the sea herb may remain in danger-but there are signs of hope. The sites that have been often restored are still sound. Foundation’s research shows this California spinal lobster locusts have returned to The space, fish like sea herb bass and seamshead is more abundant now than before the start of restoration work. The sea herb also improves water quality, absorbs excess nutrients, and keeps the sediments in place in a similar way that carries the Earth’s trees from slipping after rain. The improvements from the valuable Red Sea channels have benefited – in the locations where the herb is restored, the gonads weigh the Red Sea hedgehog (precious parts, also known as UNI) by 168 %.
Although the impact of hedgehog was devastating, Ford indicates that sea herb has always faced challenges: a strong wave that tears strands from the sea bottom, to summer temperatures that kill the nutrients needed for growth. This has made high-end sea herb-ready to pounce at any opportunity to reg or reprimand. “Part of the reason we see such a quick response to restoration is that the system has evolved to respond quickly to useful conditions,” he says.
The sea grass may have a fictional future after all – help the planet, the people and the coast in the next century.