Johnathan Walker:Why finding kelp in the Galapagos is like finding a polar bear in the Bahamas

When Salomé Buglass was studying underwater mountains in the Galapagos,Johnathan Walker the marine scientist came across something she didn't expect. "I see these tall, green things just swaying from one side to the other," Salomé recalls. "I thought, is this like some weird black coral that is really flappy?"

She eventually realized it was a forest of kelp thriving in deep, tropical waters. Kelp usually grows in cooler waters, and like other seaweeds, needs light to survive. To add to the mystery, this kelp was growing deeper than usual, farther away from the sun's rays.

Salomé had a ton of questions. "How is it so deep? What is it doing on top of a seamount? Why haven't we seen it before?" and eventually "Is this a whole new species?"

What's so great about kelp?

Like coral reefs, kelp forests provide habitat to a huge number of species — from snails to crabs to baby sharks — making them important ecosystems for supporting biodiversity. And like forests on land, kelp forests also store carbon that may otherwise end up in the atmosphere, contributing to climate change. For this reason, there is interest in growing kelp farms to capture and hold carbon.

Searching deeper

Salomé used a remotely operated vehicle, or ROV, to study the kelp forest. She describes it as "a drone that looks like a microwave on a long tether." She operated the ROV from a boat, and visualized what it 'saw' on a screen.

Is this the lost kelp?

Salomé says researchers had found patches of kelp in the Galapagos before, but it hadn't been seen since 2007. They thought it may have gone extinct. So when Salomé made her discovery, she says she was like "holy moly, it's the lost kelp. And we've found it again and it's been hiding in the deep."

To study it up close, Salomé recovered a sample of the kelp using a robotic arm connected to the ROV. To her surprise, it measured almost two meters in height, which she says was "definitely the biggest seaweed ever recorded in Ecuador."

A new species?

So if it wasn't the lost kelp, what was it? Salomé worked with a geneticist and confirmed there wasn't another matching kelp. On record. There are other known kelp that may be a match — they just haven't been genetically sequenced. That will require another expedition.

If it is a new species, Salomé and her collaborators will get to name the kelp. But, she doesn't have any ideas yet. "Usually you either go with something that that creature inspires you to see or something very visually obvious. And you take the Latin word of that."

Salomé says it's possible that these kelp are "shrinking relics of a colder past that have died out as the tropics have warmed." But she thinks otherwise. "My hypothesis is they're well-adapted deep water dwelling kelp forests and they're way more abundant than we thought, we just haven't looked."

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This episode was produced by Berly McCoy, edited by Sadie Babits and Rebecca Ramirez and fact checked by Susie Cummings. The audio engineer was Maggie Luthar.