Ocean life
A kelp nursery in Clayoquot Sound restores Canada’s coast
A nursery run with the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation has planted more than 4,200 square metres of new kelp habitat since early 2026 off Vancouver Island.
Reported by Mongabay · · 1 min read
Emily Fulton spends much of her time in a small boat on Clayoquot Sound, off the west coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia. She is the marine program manager at the nonprofit Redd Fish Restoration Society, and she regularly checks a kelp nursery growing in the traditional territory of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation. “We have grown a lot of kelp,” she says.
Its organisers describe it as the largest kelp restoration project on the west coast of North America. Since it began in early 2026 it has planted more than 4,200 square metres of new kelp habitat, about the area of three and a half Olympic swimming pools.
The team grows young bull kelp and giant kelp on four lines, each 330 metres long, hung below the surface and out of reach of seafloor predators such as sea urchins. As the kelp matures, some of it is taken off the lines and transplanted to sites around the sound, both to restore damaged kelp forests and to seed new ones.
Setting up a project of this size has cost almost a quarter of a million Canadian dollars, with money from the provincial government, WWF-Canada and the Clayoquot Biosphere Trust. Redd Fish manages it together with West Coast Kelp, a business devoted to kelp restoration, and the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation.
