Kelp Needs Help: Restoring the Kelp Forests of North Otago

Join Prof. Chris Hepburn at the Ōamaru library to discover more about the importance of North Otago’s kelp forests, and how local restoration efforts can have a positive effect, despite the broader impacts of climate change.

In North Otago, bull kelp and giant (or bladder) kelp create vital kelp forests that play a significant role in sustaining coastal communities, offering economic benefits, ensuring food security, and enhancing resilience.

Kelp forests provide habitat and energy for marine species like pāua and coastal fish, while forest canopies aid in the settlement of larval crayfish.

But our kelp forests face challenges.

Invasive kelp species, sediment, marine heatwaves and ocean warming all threaten these ecosystems and the benefits they provide. Local management strategies to control and reduce these stressors are crucial.

Prof. Chris Hepburn is a PhD graduate from Otago who grew up in Cromwell and now lives in Moeraki. His training in seaweed ecophysiology has been broadened to include the impacts of human-induced change on the ecology of kelp forests and coastal seas and their values. Chris and his team of students and collaborators work alongside coastal communities in their struggles to restore and maintain ways of life associated with productive coastal ecosystem and fisheries. He is a proud member of the East Otago Taiāpure Management Committee and Director of the Aquaculture and Fisheries Programme and works at the Portobello Marine Laboratory, Dept of Marine Science, University of Otago