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Help Our Kelp - A new coastal bill to test if common sense can still pass [1]

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Date: 2025-02-14

On Wednesday February 12th, as an early Valentines Day gift to the Ocean, U.S. Representative Jared Huffman (D CA) and Senator Jeff Merkley (D OR) reintroduced a bicameral bill, the Help Our Kelp Act of 2025 to improve conditions for kelp forests and marine life. This legislation would invest federal resources to address the ongoing crises that kelp forest ecosystems face in Southern Oregon, Northern California, and across the country (and the world).

It's also a test to see if common sense legislation that will fund the interests of coastal people in both red and blue regions can get passed in our newly Maga republican dominated Congress.

Over the last 50 years, more than 95 percent of kelp forests stretching from the South Coast of Oregon to the North Coast of California have been damaged due to a number of factors. These include a climate-linked marine heatwave that limited kelp growth and a spreading sea star wasting disease that was super-charged by that same marine heatwave and that removed a key predator of purple sea urchins – the Sunflower Sea star. In its absence (plus the historical absence of sea otters extirpated by the fur trade slaughter) the purple urchin population suddenly exploed 10,000 percent as they voraciously consumed northern California and southern Oregon’s bull kelp forests before replacing them with urchin barrens.

“Healthy kelp ecosystems are essential not only to the stability and survival hundreds of marine species, but also to protecting coastlines, generating income for coastal communities, and supporting sustainable fisheries,” argued Rep. Huffman.

“Oregon’s kelp forests provide critical habitats and food sources for the marine mammals, birds, and many fish species that support Oregon’s commercial fishing industry, Tribes, and coastal economies,” agreed Sen. Merkley.

The Help Our Kelp Act of 2025 would:

Establish a new National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) grant program to fund conservation, restoration, and management efforts to support kelp forest ecosystems;

Take steps to address the greatest relative regional declines, long-term ecological or socioeconomic resilience, and focal recovery areas identified by Tribal, federal, or state management plans;

Authorize $5 million annually for FY2026 through FY2030.

Rep. Huffman was also able to secure $2,000,000 for Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary Kelp Recovery Community Project in the Fiscal Year 2022 appropriations package. More information about that project can be found here.

Additionally, Sen. Merkley secured $2,521,000 for the Oregon Kelp Alliance’s project to help restore kelp forests in Southern Oregon in the Fiscal Year 2024 appropriations package.

The Help Our Kelp Act is endorsed by Monterey Bay Aquarium, Center for the Blue Economy, Seattle Aquarium, Blue Frontier (That’s Us!), Noyo Center for Marine Science, Ocean Conservancy, Greater Farallones Association, Oregon Kelp Alliance, Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, American Sportfishing Association, Surfrider Foundation, The Nature Conservancy, and The Bay Foundation.

To elaborate just a bit - Kelp Forests are the Sequoias of the Sea only with sea otters. They’re a magnificent and productive marine species and habitat that generate over $500 billion a year in terms of fisheries, tourism, coastal protection, and indigenous and community-based cultural values. Plus, they provide the ‘mother seed’ for the world’s growing seaweed farming industry, vital to future food security and medical and materials innovation. With 60 percent of the world’s kelp forests damaged or destroyed, including 95 percent in Northern California and parts of New England, we need the Help Our Kelp Act to protect and restore these natural engines of productivity. One of the fastest growing organisms on earth (giant kelp can grow well over a foot a day) we know that these types of investments work. In South Korea, their fisheries ministry has restored 50,000 acres of kelp and aims to restore a total of 150,000 by 2030. Of course, they’re investing $30 million a year but $5 million a year would be a good start for the U.S. After all, we need to invest in kelp that, like coral reefs and salt marshes, keeps our public seas healthy and productive. Call your member of Congress if you want and push them to pass something useful for a change. Also if you’d like to learn more, you’ll soon be able to view Blue Frontier’s ‘Sequoias of the Sea’ documentary by Natasha Benjamin and Ana Blanco that will be premiering this spring at the SF International Ocean Film Festival. That will be followed up by Blue Frontier’s book on kelp that I’m now writing, ‘The Forest in the Sea’ to be out in 2026 with Island Press.

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