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KelpFest this weekend celebrates return of giant kelp forests

June 6, 2025

The mounds of kelp washed ashore Orange County beaches by recent storms is a visual not so common in recent years.

The brown leafy algae had been under attack from a non-native species known as sargassum, trying to take it the coastline, said Nancy Caruso, a marine biologist who has been surveying and studying the kelp for more than a decade.

“In the last two years, I’ve seen baby kelp and the baby kelp is maturing and persisting now,” Caruso said, explaining how this year’s La Nina and its drier conditions brought fewer storms and instead drew in a lot of cold water full of rich nutrients from deep in the ocean.

Main Beach Park in Laguna Beach on Monday, June 2, 2025. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

“Kelp likes to grow in cold, nutrient-rich water and we didn’t have big storms,” she said, adding that when she dove for the first time this year in March, the water temperature registered at a chilly 54 degrees. “The last two winters, we had big storms, but the kelp persisted. This year, I’ve seen the same kelp that has been baby for the last two years and is bigger and has more stipes and is maturing.”

The strands of kelp surfacing on the sand, ripped out by large surf surges, couldn’t serve as a better backdrop for the Laguna Ocean Foundation’s annual KelpFest planned for Saturday, June 7, at Main Beach Park.

The Laguna Beach festival, started by Caruso in 2010 after she worked on the Orange County Giant Kelp Restoration Project, celebrates the local coast’s kelp forests and their importance in the ocean’s ecosystem.

Beach goers walk past the sea kelp at Main Beach in Laguna Beach on Monday, June 2, 2025. (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

At least 13 environmental groups will participate in this year’s event, which promotes the importance of a thriving ecosystem, where giant brown forests play a major role. Laguna Beach has an ideal habitat for kelp forests with coves that have steeper terrain and rocky outcroppings where kelp can anchor and grow.

“Having the kelp out on the beach is the perfect backdrop because that shows the success of the return of the kelp forest, which is what Nancy created KelpFest for,” said Alayna Ader, the education and leadership manager for the foundation.

And, it’s also perfect for this year’s new “Algae Walk & Talk” planned for Saturday and led by the foundation’s phycology (the study of algae) specialist. The tour will go from the cobblestones at Main Beach, where the festival will be set up, along the sand to Heisler Park.

“She’ll talk about the importance of kelp and the different species you can find,” Ader said, adding that the talk will include reasons why the kelp is vital not only in the ocean, but also once it washes ashore, where insects and birds make use of it.

Since Laguna Beach’s coastline is mostly a Marine Protected Area, the kelp, along with anything in the tidepools, including rocks or any of the small critters, can’t be removed.

So, Ader said, the biologist will utilize having samples at the ready to better explain how the algae grow and thrive.

“People can get a better sense of the algae that way,” she said. “It’s one thing to read about it or see it jumbled up, but our giant kelp can grow really long, and it’s a really cool species. For people to see it up close and have it explained to them will help create that curiosity and intrigue of why you should care.”

The bountiful kelp, especially in Laguna Beach, illustrates the importance of the MPAs and their protections. Both Ader and Caruso point to the increased biodiversity of sea life off the coast, especially in areas where preservation has occurred, such as Laguna Beach, off Corona Del Mar and Salt Creek Beach in Dana Point.

“That was the purpose of the MPAs and having that safe space for the fishery to really rebuild itself,” Ader said. “Those kelp forests are part of the success. It had the space and the ability to grow and the fish found it. They found a space where they can hide, get shelter, and get food because it brings in other animals as well. It’s really helped to create a well-rounded and unique ecosystem where everything really does thrive off each other.”

In the last few years, Caruso said she found the kelp was able to fight its way back through the sargassum that had threatened to take over.

Tope sharks -- similarly sized to leopard sharks -- are being seen off Laguna Beach's coastline regularly. Divers say that hasn't been the case in many years. The sharks don't bother people and have been observed mating in April and May. (Photo by Alexandra Kahler) — Photo by Alexandra Kahler

Tope sharks — similarly sized to leopard sharks — are being seen off Laguna Beach’s coastline regularly. Divers say that hasn’t been the case in many years. The sharks don’t bother people and have been observed mating in April and May. (Photo by Alexandra Kahler)

“For three years, we saw amazing biodiversity of all the different species of algae, especially at Heisler, there were species I’d only seen at Salt Creek that were growing at Heisler,” Caruso said.

When it comes to diversity, Caruso said, her surveys are showing a rebound of kelp in areas where it’s not been readily found for years.

“In Corona Del Mar, there’s more kelp than there has been since 2014,” she said. “I was surveying there a couple of weeks ago and I noticed, where all the reefs were covered with sand … now, it’s covered in kelp.”

But there is a “natural cycle of things,” she said, and over the next two to 10 years, she expects the ocean to again go back to El Nino conditions that will reset the whole ecosystem, where the kelp forests are thinned out and heavier storms will further rip out the kelp.

“You’ll see this amazing biodiversity again,” she said, “and you’ll get back to the climax of the community, which is the giant kelp.”

KelpFest this weekend celebrates return of giant kelp forests Orange County Register

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KelpFest this weekend celebrates return of giant kelp forests

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