Blue Futures Kelp

Blue Futures Kelp 🌊 Restoring kelp forests, advancing restoration science, & working toward a resilient future marine ecosystem

📍 Unceded Lekwungen terr. (Victoria, BC)

What a week! From seas to stars, and everything in between 🌊🪐This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the Thr...
05/13/2026

What a week! From seas to stars, and everything in between 🌊🪐

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending the Three Stars Dark Sky Festival, where I joined a panel on ocean science and mariculture with and Morgan Ursel of Nova Harvest! It was fun sharing insights and stories with a diverse audience of community members, visitors, and travelling astronomers. Other highlights included seeing sunspots and flares with special solar telescopes, learning about Cree cosmology in the Newayak Kisikohk mobile planetarium, and enjoying a beachside concert of incredible musicians while the stars came out. Thank you to HFN and .events for hosting the festival and having me out, I’m already looking forward to the next one and highly recommend it for all others with a love of astronomy and the sea!

Just prior, I attended the , where I had the chance to reconnect with many phyco-friends and appreciate the community of maricultrurists, scientists, innovators, and ocean stewards across this coast that I feel lucky to be a part of! We all came away with the clear mandate heard from First Nations attendees to uphold decolonial practices where we work, and to ensure seaweed mariculture/restoration is not extractive from coastal communities and environments. Thank you to Wei Wai K*m First Nation for welcoming us to your territory and hosting us along with the , , and ! Shoutout to all the organizers from these hosting organizations who made the gathering happen 🌿

I’m excited to be a panelist at this year’s Three Star’s Dark Sky Festival, happening May 8-10 in my old home on Huu-ay-...
04/16/2026

I’m excited to be a panelist at this year’s Three Star’s Dark Sky Festival, happening May 8-10 in my old home on Huu-ay-aht territory! 🌌 Grateful for the opportunity to join friends, community members, and visitors for a discussion on marine science and sustainability (and maybe nerd out a bit about my passion for space and amateur astronomy, too 😏). Big thanks to and .events for hosting this festival and including me in it! It’s going to be a blast, if this sounds up your alley, book your festival tickets and join 🪐🌊

📍Pathways: Between Land & Sky | House of Huu-ay-aht | 📆 Sunday, May 10
👉🎟️ Plan your visit: https://hgb.tickit.ca/events/34302-three-stars-
dark-sky-festival



.events .eliah
.heritage .council

I’ve recently had the opportunity to commercially harvest sea urchins with the crew of the Seaworthy, a small fishing bo...
04/04/2026

I’ve recently had the opportunity to commercially harvest sea urchins with the crew of the Seaworthy, a small fishing boat out of Richmond that sells our catch directly to customers on the dock! It’s been awesome to do commercial dive harvesting for the first time, and learn the ropes of a fishery that has huge potential to help kelp forests threatened by urchin overgrazing. This week’s harvest was in the traditional and unceded territory of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, in the northern Gulf Islands.

While sea urchins can be part of a healthy kelp forest, declines of their predators like the Sunflower Seastar or Sea Otters have led to an imbalanced ecosystem and the loss of huge areas of kelp forests along this coast. Restoring and conserving kelp requires a multi-pronged approach that depends on local factors, and recent field studies I co-led showed that lowering urchin densities through harvest can be a powerful tool for protecting kelp. Plus, sea urchins are delicious! Their go**ds are a delicacy for cultures throughout the world, and a traditional seafood for First Nations whose territories make up what we think of today as coastal BC.

The Seaworthy will continue harvesting urchins from the south Salish Sea all year, if you’re in the lower mainland you can try the catch at the Steveston docks most weekends! Follow Seaworthy’s Sea Urchin’s-Steveston BC for updates on sales and availability. I’m excited to participate in this fishery while continuing to work toward conserving and protecting kelp forests! 🌊

02/14/2026

Want to see what’s growing at Blue Futures Kelp?

This is a gametophyte cell culture propagated from Giant Kelp spores, which were collected this winter in T’Sou’ke territory here on Vancouver Island. These gametophytes are the invisible stage of the kelp life cycle, growing microscopically on the sea floor over winter before giving rise to the large fronds we all know and love. Incubating them in dim red light prevents them from entering into their next growth phase, and they can be bulked up enough to become visible to the naked eye.

This antique microscope lets us see how they look zoomed in, growing in these chains of cells. What you see here are many genetically distinct gametophytes, each grown from its own spore, with golden-brown chloroplasts (photosynthetic organelles) visible through their cell walls. They have different sexes at this life stage, with the females growing in thicker, stouter chains, and the males growing in thinner, spindly chains.

Culturing gametophytes like this is a central part of growing kelp for restoration and research. Follow along for more updates on what’s being done with them here at Blue Futures Kelp!

A textbook chapter coauthored by Blue Future Kelp’s Clay Steell on biobanking kelps & other macroalgae is out now in Spr...
01/23/2026

A textbook chapter coauthored by Blue Future Kelp’s Clay Steell on biobanking kelps & other macroalgae is out now in Springer Nature! It was rewarding to work with this international team of other phycologists active in biobanking, big thanks to Dr. Emily Aguirre with Kelp Ark for leading this work!

In the same way that seed banks can safeguard species and strains of plants, we can biobank the microscopic life stages of many seaweeds by incubating them in cold, low-light conditions. Kelp gametophytes can be grown very slowly for decades into the future this way, with fairly minimal upkeep. These techniques, the basics of which are old but we’ve been refining in recent years, offer hope for preserving populations of kelp with unique genotypes that may be at risk of collapse due to climate warming and its cascading ecological effects. And just like seed banks, these cultures can be “withdrawn” at any time for use in restoration or research!

Clay has biobanked hundreds of unique strains of kelp in the last few years, and continues to with Blue Futures Kelp! Follow along for more kelp biobanking and restoration updates 🌊

Earlier this fall, Blue Futures Kelp was awarded an Ocean Action Grant to set up a new gametophyte culturing lab and co...
12/30/2025

Earlier this fall, Blue Futures Kelp was awarded an Ocean Action Grant to set up a new gametophyte culturing lab and collect spores from a potentially vulnerable population of Giant Kelp (Macrocystis pyrifera) for long term bio-banking!

While canopy-forming kelp species continue thriving on some parts of this coast, some of their populations may be on the brink of collapse due to climate warming and its cascading ecological effects. An emergent theme of recent research I’ve supported is that many of these vulnerable populations have unique genotypes that may be critical for restoring kelp forests in a warming ocean, as we’ve shown that different genotypes within a kelp species can be more or less tolerant to stressors like high temperature. If we lose a kelp population’s unique genotype, we lose its potential for helping the species to adapt to a warming ocean.

By collecting spores and creating gametophyte cultures from this population of Giant Kelp growing at the edge of its range into the Strait of Juan de Fuca (which in turn can be cloned and re-animated decades into the future), this Ocean Action Grant funded project ensures this unique genotype is conserved as we move into a warmer future, and can be made available for any future restoration if its ever needed! The gametophyte cultures are almost a month old now, and growing well.

This kelp population is but one of many growing at a range edge along the geographically complex coast of the Salish Sea and its approaches, prompting a challenge to understand and conserve them all. Bio-banking these populations is a keen interest of mine, one I hope to continue through Blue Futures Kelp!

A huge thank you to for supporting this work, and to my friend and longtime collaborator Dr. Lauren Dykman for volunteering to collect this kelp with me!

Earlier this month, BFK ushered in the winter with its first occupational diving contract, collecting biodiversity data ...
12/23/2025

Earlier this month, BFK ushered in the winter with its first occupational diving contract, collecting biodiversity data for a client and their First Nation partner monitoring kelp and urchin barren dynamics, and also gathering sea urchin samples for them to analyze. Grateful to have worked with a stellar dive team and in ideal sea conditions in this otherwise stormy time of year! We used the Reef Life Survey method, and the data we collected will be submitted to Reef Life Survey Foundation (RLS) to add to their global database tracking marine biodiversity across space and time!

Introducing Blue Futures Kelp, a new venture to restore kelp forests and advance restoration science in the northeast Pa...
12/21/2025

Introducing Blue Futures Kelp, a new venture to restore kelp forests and advance restoration science in the northeast Pacific Ocean! Here’s an opening message from BFK’s founder and principal, Clay Steell:

My first foray into seaweeds & algae culturing was over a decade ago during my undergraduate research. After many subsequent adventures working in fish physiology and ecology, in 2021 I got the opportunity to return to the world of seaweeds, and apply my research and project management skills to the growing discipline of kelp forest restoration, ever since which I’ve been hooked. I was lucky to learn the ropes from several expert phycologists, ecologists, & knowledge holders, and did a heck of a lot of R&D over the years to develop my own techniques for growing kelp in the lab, in the nursery, and in the field!

I’m grateful to continue applying myself to the urgent need to protect, understand, and restore kelp forest ecosystems on this coast, as these critical habitats face declines, extirpation, and upheaval from climate warming and its cascading ecological effects. Stay tuned for more updates from the past few months and what’s coming next, and please reach out if you’d like to work together!

Thank you to Ky Hansen for designing this logo!

Address

Victoria, BC

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Blue Futures Kelp posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Shortcuts

Share

Category