Tiffany Seav

Kelp Me, 2019

Collagraph, Stonehenge 5’ 6” H x 52’2 W

The kelp forest provides food and shelter for fishes, invertebrates, and marine creatures as well as harbor a great variety and diversity of plants and animals.1 I believe that kelp plays a crucial part in the ocean ecosystem. Both human and marine creatures consume and utilize kelp. The fact that we are over-harvesting kelps makes us responsible for the negative impact on the ocean ecosystem. An article from National Marine Sanctuaries stated that human activities affect the kelp forest environments. Commercial kelp harvesting is potentially the greatest threat of long-term kelp stability, and it proves how kelp is a highly demanded product that we used them to produce goods such as food additives and pharmaceutical products.2

Human activities are not the only issue that the kelp forest is dealing with. The increasing population of sea urchins, grazing fishes, and the increasing water temperature is disrupting the balance and fragile kelp forest ecosystem. “In the current year, Northern California’s iconic kelp forest has almost entirely disappeared due to the region’s population of purple sea urchins.”3 “Warm water temperatures also affect the physiological stress of the kelp forest. Higher temperature water makes kelp forests more vulnerable to additional threats such as extreme storms, overfishing, and pollution.”4

The kelp forest parallels the land forest; both environments have a full variety of animals, plants, and habitats. However, we humans are at fault of devastating and industrializing these natural resources to the point where there is nothing left. The kelp over-harvesting in our ocean is yet another reminder and reflection of how humans have destroyed our planet through deforestation.

Seav begins to research oceanic environmental issues when she has decided to research on the kelp forest. She is not only astounded by the increasing population of sea urchins that are consuming the kelp forest and realizing human activities plays critical cause and effect of our ocean’s ecosystem. Seav’s process of creating color form prints, she did not want to purchase kelp from the market and become part of the consumer. Instead, she has visited local beaches to collect fresh kelps to incorporate them into her work.

1 https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/kelp.html

2 https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/visit/ecosystems/kelpimpacts.html

3 https://www.newsdeeply.com/oceans/articles/2017/10/10/sea-urchins-are-laying-waste-to-kelp- forests-and-an-entire-ecosystem

4

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/theworldpost/wp/2018/10/23/ocean/?noredirect=on&utm

_term=.c429e3fe5af4