Christmas

No talk in December. See you back in January
 

The Importance of our Kelp Forests
Dr Ian Hendy, Dept Marine Biology Portsmouth University
 
17th January 2022  7.30pm. By Zoom

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Coastal and near-shore marine vegetated ecosystems are essential for life on Earth. Ecosystems including mangrove forests, saltmarsh, seagrass beds and kelp forests are incredible carbon sinks. These habitats drawdown huge amounts of carbon from the atmosphere, and deliver an amazing list of ecosystem services including mitigation of climate change, improving water quality, and significant enhancement to fishery biomass. However, we are losing these essential ecosystems rapidly. We have seen between 80 to 90 % loss of kelp forests spanning Canada to Norway and at the current rate of loss, the UK will have zero kelp forests by the end of this century. We are working to restore kelp forests within a 300 Km2 area of Sussex coastline.