A new project in Wellington aims to regenerate the region's seaweed forests.
Nic Toki mentioned the Love Rimurimu restoration project recently during Critter of the Week.
Mountains to Sea executive director Zoe Studd talks to Jesse about their work and what they're doing.
Photo: NIWA/ Leigh Tait
Seaweed is incredibly important stuff, Studd told Jesse Mulligan.
“It’s the basis of most of our food, food chains in the ocean, and it's in decline.”
But it has a bit of an image problem, she says.
“We really wanted to switch that over and to help people start to fall in love with seaweeds, and to get to know them a little bit better.”
The education programme began a couple of years ago, she says.
“Through that the students started to get really interested in trying to grow their own and to think about marine restoration.”
The group pitched the idea of establishing seaweed regeneration sites in Wellington.
“So, we’re just underway, and we've just got our first seaweed babies hatching in the lab at the moment, so it's pretty exciting.”
Kina an indigenous sea urchin pose a problem in Wellington, she says.
“So, the kina numbers in Wellington are increasing. And it’s a thing that you see up in the north quite a lot, we call them kina barrens and it’s where that ecosystem is essentially flipped. So, they go from being, you know, quite a healthy seaweed forest.
“But then you lose through over overfishing and other types of pressures, some of those larger predators like snappers, and crayfish, and they keep kina numbers down.
“Once those species are being removed, or they're in quite low abundance, then the kina have the opportunity to explode.”
Kina love eating seaweed and will fell an entire forest, she says.
“You lose all the other species that are associated with it, too. And then it makes it very hard for those seaweed forests to re-establish.
“One of the places we see seaweed forests come back round is in areas where there's total marine protection because you get those top predators back again, and enough sort of abundance to keep the kina numbers down.”
Seaweed is “wondrous” stuff, Studd says.
“They absorb nutrients, they improve water quality, they protect our coastlines, they buffer them from storm and wave surges.
“They rebuild ecosystems that support fisheries and obviously healthy coastal communities as well. They absorb carbon, so there's some incredible potential in reducing localised ocean acidification impacts as well.”
