---
title: a line of twine is not a kelp forest
canonical_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/a-line-of-twine-is-not-a-kelp-forest
markdown_url: https://ensurance.app/guide/a-line-of-twine-is-not-a-kelp-forest.md
subtitle: the nursery line can be the right tool. it is still not the canopy
category: natural-capital
---

# a line of twine is not a kelp forest

*the nursery line can be the right tool. it is still not the canopy*

**Kelp restoration** is the work of getting a living canopy back on a reef that lost it. Culling, spore bags, seeded twine, and outplanting are the tools a lab or a dive team already uses. On a cove that has lost its canopy, any one of them can be the right move. The forest is the canopy that recruits on its own the next year.

A grant report can list every tool and still be describing equipment. The fish, the abalone, and the otters are in the canopy.

:::johnson
**a line of twine is not a kelp forest.** The nursery line can be the right tool. The canopy that recruits on its own next year is the forest.

[the reef with the forest gone →](/guide/you-dont-have-an-empty-reef-you-have-a-missing-forest?from=guide)
:::

## what the tools are

The [Kelp Forest Alliance guidebook](https://kelpforestalliance.com/kelp-restoration-guidebook/5-0-kelp-forest-restoration-in-action-methods/) is the field manual. Methods combine. On transplanting, the long-term focus is the second generation: the plants that settle after the first ones go in the water.

**Culling** is grazer control. Purple urchins are native. Sunflower sea stars (*Pycnopodia helianthoides*) kept them in check until sea star wasting disease. Along the California coast the stars were plentiful until 2013. With that predator gone, and when the water stays hot, purple urchin grazing can outrun what the kelp replaces. The guidebook separates three responses: harvest, which takes urchins to a use on shore; culling, which kills them on the reef; and translocation, which moves them. Reef Check trains Oregon volunteers to cull purple and red sea urchins so grazing drops and kelp can reestablish. The reef with the forest already gone is an [urchin barren](/guide/you-dont-have-an-empty-reef-you-have-a-missing-forest?from=guide). Lower urchin density is a change in pressure on that rock.

**Spore bags**, which the guidebook also calls seed bombs, are mesh bags of mature blades, the tissue that carries sori. The bag hangs on a line between an anchor and a float, or sits on the rock, and zoospores release onto stone. When the blades have spawned, the bag and the line come out.

**Seeded twine** is a nursery line. Spores settle on twine in a tank. The twine is wrapped onto a larger rope, or tied into an array, and anchored and buoyed in the cove. Floating the line keeps young kelp above the urchins. Those plants are there to seed the rock underneath. The line usually comes out after one spawn.

**Outplanting** is the transfer from the nursery to the reef. Lab-grown bull kelp goes out on twine, or as young plants fixed to an array. California projects call that array an ARKEV, Array to Recover Kelp Ecosystem Vegetation: sprouts on twine, held off the bottom while they grow.

## four stages on the same rock

| stage | what is in the water | what it counts as |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Culled rock | Purple urchins taken down so grazing no longer outruns the kelp. | A reef that can receive plants. The rock can still be empty. |
| Seeded twine | Nursery line inoculated with bull kelp and set in the cove. | A tool in the water. A start. |
| Young recruits | Sporophytes on the line, or on the seafloor beside it, this season. | This year's plants. |
| A canopy that recruits on its own the next year | Spores from those plants settle and grow with no new line to deploy. | The forest. |

Bull kelp, *Nereocystis luetkeana*, is the canopy on the Oregon coast and on California's north coast, and it is largely an annual. A plant on this year's twine has one season to put spores on the rock. Giant kelp, *Macrocystis pyrifera*, is the perennial stand farther south. That split is [bull kelp and giant kelp are not the same forest](/guide/bull-kelp-and-giant-kelp-are-not-the-same-forest?from=guide). The living canopy either species makes is [what a kelp forest actually is](/guide/what-a-kelp-forest-actually-is?from=guide).

## lab-grown bull kelp at fort ross

On July 23, 2026, the Greater Farallones Association reported that its kelp team had moved lab-grown bull kelp from the nursery to the ocean. They cultured it from the reproductive material of healthy adult plants at Bodega Marine Laboratory, inoculated restoration twine, and outplanted 54 meters at Fort Ross Cove. Weeks later, divers documented young bull kelp on the restoration structures and on the surrounding seafloor. The cove had stayed largely barren since the regional collapse.

The same summer they prepared 199 juvenile bull kelp, from 3 to 120 centimeters, and outplanted them on ARKEV units at Stillwater Cove. It was the first test of that gear inside the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. Years of work at the association's restoration sites have also removed more than 190,000 pounds of purple urchins.

The twine put plants on the reef, and the urchin removal belongs to the same program. Kelp restoration is in progress at those sites. The forest is the canopy that recruits after those plants spawn.

## the first plants can come back

On a cove that just blinked out, removal plus a start can be how the first plants return. Macklyn Cove and Big River are that paragraph, and they did the start differently.

In southern Oregon, Reef Check's restoration program trains volunteers to cull purple and red sea urchins, with the Oregon Kelp Alliance as partner. On June 26, 2026, Reef Check reported that two of those sites, Macklyn Cove and Nellies Cove, had naturally recruited kelp for the first time in nearly a decade. For many of the volunteers, and for some of the staff, it was the first time they had seen kelp on those reefs. The plants that came back recruited themselves.

Big River grew back year after year through the earlier losses in the region. By 2023, more than 90 percent of the kelp at the mouth of the river, in Mendocino, was gone. California Sea Grant and the California Ocean Protection Council funded a consortium led by Tristin Anoush McHugh, kelp project director at The Nature Conservancy. Commercial divers hand-collected purple urchins. The team grew bull kelp at Moss Landing Marine Laboratories, wove the sprouts into twine, and set the twine on ARKEV arrays above the rock. Within two months the kelp had grown up, matured, and released spores onto the seafloor around the arrays. Fall 2025 canopy was up more than 900 percent from the 2023 low, and McHugh told California Sea Grant they were near 2022 levels again. She also said another marine heatwave had recently hit the coast.

Removal plus a start did what a start can do. The heat is still a fact in the same interview. Next year's canopy is the fact that has to be true again.

## where the name goes wrong

Two misreadings. Neither one is the diver, the lab, or the alliance.

The first is calling the twine a forest. The 54 meters at Fort Ross Cove, the 199 juveniles at Stillwater Cove, and a line of seeded twine on any other reef are outplants. They sit on the second and third rows of the table. Natural recruitment at Macklyn Cove and Nellies Cove, after nearly a decade, is the fourth row beginning. Big River's return from the 2023 low is a canopy that came back, with the heat still named. A grant can pay for the divers and the twine and be the right first check. The grant ends. The forest is the year after the check.

The second is planting while the cove is still erasing kelp. The guidebook is plain: a site with too many grazers has to deal with the grazers, and juveniles are the stage grazing takes first. Outplanting onto rock that purple urchins still mow, or into a heatwave that is still taking the blades, does not leave plants that persist. Fort Ross and Big River paired outplants with urchin work. At Macklyn Cove and Nellies Cove the work was the culling, and the kelp recruited on its own. On those reefs the practice was grazers first, then a start. A line in water that is still too hot, or still too full of urchins, is equipment on the wrong reef.

## frequently asked questions

### what is kelp restoration?

Kelp restoration is the work of returning a living canopy to a reef that lost it. Culling, spore bags, seeded twine, and outplanting are tools in that work. The forest is the canopy that recruits on its own the following year.

### is outplanting the same as a kelp forest?

Outplanting moves nursery kelp onto the reef. In July 2026 the Greater Farallones Association outplanted 54 meters of seeded twine at Fort Ross Cove and set juvenile bull kelp on ARKEV units at Stillwater Cove. Divers then found young bull kelp on the structures and on the seafloor. A kelp forest is the canopy that generation leaves behind.

### when does a cove count as restored?

A cove counts as restored when kelp recruits on its own the next year, and grazing and heat are no longer erasing it. Reef Check's June 2026 report of natural recruitment at Macklyn Cove and Nellies Cove, the first in nearly a decade, is that count beginning. Big River's fall 2025 canopy, up more than 900 percent from the 2023 low and near 2022 levels, is a return with a marine heatwave still on the books. Sprouts on a line mean the tool is in the water.

## keep the twine if it becomes a forest

Keep the twine if the plants on it become a canopy that recruits the next year. Hold the forest if you want that canopy in the water after the grant ends.

Bull kelp and giant kelp already grow in the Pacific nearshore. The fish, the abalone, and the otters that use them exist whether or not anyone buys a certificate. An urchin barren is the reef with the forest gone. A line of seeded twine is a tool. [*ensurance*](/coastal-resilience.syndicate?from=guide) funds the living forest. It is not the forest.

A certificate is funding tied to a named forest. A coin is the broader instrument. The coastal resilience syndicate is the account that can hold the canopy. A foundation funding [restoration and stewardship](/solutions/foundations?from=guide&topic=kelp-forest) is funding that canopy, the row that has to be true next spring.

The land version of this honesty is one sentence: [a planted tree is not a forest](/guide/a-planted-tree-is-not-a-forest?from=guide). A nursery piece on a coral reef is a different stock: [a nursery fragment is not a reef](/guide/a-nursery-fragment-is-not-a-reef?from=guide). The animal city itself is [what coral reefs actually are](/guide/what-coral-reefs-actually-are?from=guide). The [marine systems coin](/marine-systems.ensurance?from=guide) carries marine funding beside this canopy. Tidal marsh, mangrove, and seagrass sit on the [coastal systems coin](/coastal-systems.ensurance?from=guide). A blue-carbon credit is a different claim from this canopy: [a blue-carbon credit is not a living shore](/guide/a-blue-carbon-credit-is-not-a-living-shore?from=guide).

## sources

[Greater Farallones Association, July 23, 2026](https://farallones.org/news-items/restoring-californias-kelp-forests-one-reef-at-a-time/) — 54 meters of twine outplanted at Fort Ross Cove, 199 juveniles on ARKEV units at Stillwater Cove, more than 190,000 pounds of purple urchins removed at restoration sites.

[Reef Check, June 26, 2026](https://www.reefcheck.org/kelp-restoration-gets-underway-in-oregon-with-encouraging-signs-of-recovery/) — natural recruitment at Macklyn Cove and Nellies Cove, the first in nearly a decade; Oregon culling with the Oregon Kelp Alliance.

[California Sea Grant, January 15, 2026](https://caseagrant.ucsd.edu/news/back-brink-big-river-kelps-dramatic-comeback) — Big River urchin removal and ARKEV outplants; fall 2025 canopy up more than 900 percent from the 2023 low and near 2022 levels.

[Kelp Forest Alliance, Kelp Restoration Guidebook, chapter 5](https://kelpforestalliance.com/kelp-restoration-guidebook/5-0-kelp-forest-restoration-in-action-methods/) — culling, spore bags, seed lines, and the second-generation test for transplants.

## the series

- [what a kelp forest actually is](/guide/what-a-kelp-forest-actually-is?from=guide)
- [you don't have an empty reef. you have a missing forest](/guide/you-dont-have-an-empty-reef-you-have-a-missing-forest?from=guide)
- [bull kelp and giant kelp are not the same forest](/guide/bull-kelp-and-giant-kelp-are-not-the-same-forest?from=guide)
- [a line of twine is not a kelp forest](/guide/a-line-of-twine-is-not-a-kelp-forest?from=guide)
- [who already keeps the forest in the water](/guide/who-already-keeps-the-forest-in-the-water?from=guide)