We have a century agenda goal
to become the cleanest, greenest port in North America.
We also have goals around habitat restoration.
We're interested in learning more about how we can create conditions
in which kelp can thrive.
Kelp is really the manna of the sea.
It provides numerous services that enable fish and wildlife to thrive.
Elliott Bay is ringed with kelp.
Not continuously, but there are certain chunks of the waterfront
that have these mats of kelp forest.
This is an area of urban kelp habitat.
What we're seeing are kind of more substantial kelp beds in the north
part of Elliott Bay and then patchier smaller
kelp beds further south.
The genus of this species
is Nereocystis, which means mermaids bladder.
And that's what keeps it floating at the surface.
So you can see the fronds are rather like the hair of the mermaid.
And it's really quite a beautiful sight, but it's also remarkable.
It can grow a hundred feet in a season, like a foot a day.
These are kelp forests, just like trees in the in the woods.
These forests allow for not only plants and animals to survive around them,
but also can sequester carbon.
And we have a strategic relationship now with the Seattle Aquarium
to see why it grows in some places and not others.
And taking those lessons and applying it to our habitat restoration efforts.
We're experimenting
and trying to learn more about how to restore not only kelp,
but also eelgrass beds and oyster beds, which are all keystone
kind of habitats here in Puget Sound.
We are in front of the breakwater at Elliott Bay Marina,
and there's an extensive kelp bed that runs along the entire
breakwater here.
And today looks like a pretty good day to see what these kelp beds looks like here.
Part of our partnership with the Seattle Aquarium
we are using an underwater remotely operated vehicle.
ROV, Nereo, short for Nereocystis.
And we do indeed use an Xbox game controller to fly the vehicle.
That's good.
And we have cameras facing downwards and a camera facing forwards.
And we have lights and various sensor equipment.
And our objective is to gather as much video as possible.
We're conducting what's called benthic surveys.
So we're looking to gather information about what species are present
and where they are and what types of substrate they associate with.
So conducting about 100 meter transects,
Gain is thirty percent.
You see all sorts of cobble hard substrate.
We are 39.2 feet beneath the surface.
What we see out there is these these really
rich and vibrant kelp beds.
There is a lot of understory algal species as well.
Oh, and a nice lingcod right down there.
Oh, yeah. Good eye.
We can go take a peek.
We're able to see that.
And we're also able to see this bull kelp canopy.
We've seen large bull kelp declines in parts of Puget Sound.
And our overarching objective is to better understand
what types of substrate bull kelp attach to and grow on.
So what we're doing for this project is training
A.I. algorithms to know what species are.
So this is a sea star. This is a sea urchin. This is a fish.
Like acrobats.
Yeah.
Yep.
So one of the hypotheses
for why bull kelp doesn't do well in certain areas, there's there's
some preliminary observational evidence that kelp crabs
may be contributing to bull
kelp failure to thrive, essentially.
So that has led to another initiative
that we're hoping to implement in 2023.
And that's to place octopus
pots, octopus homes to attract octopus to Smith Cove.
And they eat the kelp crab.
And we're hoping that that might help the population of kelp.
And this is all part of what the Port sees as part of its responsibility
to be a steward of the environment that we do business in.
And I think this is good for the habitat, but also those of us
that depend on a healthy Puget Sound.
Getting myself into a hot mess of kelp.
And so what we're hoping to get out of this partnership
is just really understanding why kelp are living where they are
and what conditions they're thriving under.
And so potentially we can replicate those in future restoration projects.
That's the most tangled we've been.
We're just getting a clue at the beginning of how important
this species is to the recovery of the Salish Sea at large.